


More Than Ever | J2 AU NC-17 |

by fufaraw (arliss)



Series: More Than Words [4]
Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: AU, Aftermath of Torture, Dystopia, J2, M/M, PTSD, Prison, Rape/Non-con Elements, Violence, hurt!Jared
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-18
Updated: 2013-08-18
Packaged: 2017-12-23 20:55:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 7
Words: 42,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/930997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arliss/pseuds/fufaraw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every rebellion exacts a price. When Jared is swept up in a raid by Repro and disappears, that cost becomes harder with every passing day. Jensen is left alone to keep their family together while people he loves, and some he never knew, are working to change the world and find the missing. When Jared is finally found and reunited with his husband and family, Jared is a changed man. Scarred, broken, brutalized in terrible ways, how can he live with what happened to him while he was imprisoned without trial or hope? Is he strong enough to recover, to reclaim his life? Has living with no news and little hope for so long changed Jensen? Can they find each other and believe in love again?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. More Than Ever

**Author's Note:**

> **MORE THAN EVER**  
>  **Fic title:** [More Than Ever](http://fufaraw.livejournal.com/26563.html)  
>  **Author name:** [ **fufaraw** ](http://fufaraw.livejournal.com/)  
> **Artist name:** [ **angstpuppy** ](http://angstpuppy.livejournal.com/)  
> **Genre:** RPS AU  
>  **Pairing:** Jared/Jensen, Jared/OMC  
>  **Rating:** NC-17  
>  **Word count:** 41,935  
>  **Warnings:** noncon, PTSD, flashbacks of torture, violence, prison, hurt!Jared  
>  **Written for:**   
> [ **spn_j2_bigbang** ](http://spn-j2-bigbang.livejournal.com/) [ **2013** ](http://spn-j2-bigbang.livejournal.com)  
> 
> 
> Check out the gorgeous [**Sound Track**](http://angstpuppy.livejournal.com/pics/catalog/19737/518908) [](http://angstpuppy.livejournal.com/profile)[**angstpuppy**](http://angstpuppy.livejournal.com/) created for my story! Complete with art!  
>   
> [](http://angstpuppy.livejournal.com/pics/catalog/19737/518908)  
>  _ **[Download it here!](https://app.box.com/s/akw1zw42ajhxpt4xlmwf)**_

 

It had been a good birth. After a rudely healthy and uncomplicated pregnancy, when JJ said he wanted to deliver at home, the obstetrician agreed. The hospital where she maintained admitting privileges was mere minutes away, and Dr. Haney herself had come to the house, with Col to do any necessary heavy lifting. The nurse had a gentle way about him, a calming presence and an easy humor, and JJ felt comfortable and familiar with him from office visits.

Their family doctor had referred them to Moira Haney early in JJ's pregnancy, and the relationship had become a good one. So when JJ went into labor, it only took a call before Col showed up a few minutes later, getting JJ up and walking, timing contractions, and keeping Dr. Haney informed until time for things to get serious. She was on their doorstep a few minutes later, and things progressed rapidly from there. All the excitement over for now, Dr. Haney had gone home, leaving her patients under Col's watchful gaze. Jared smiled as he got the tea together, pouring mugs for Col and Jensen. Col was sitting with JJ, who was sleeping. He smiled reassurance as Jared set the mug down next to the chair where Col sprawled. "Boy's doin' fine," he said, pointing with his chin toward the bed. "He should sleep for hours."

Jared nodded, bending to brush the hair back from his youngest's forehead and drop a kiss on the smooth skin. "You let us know if you need a break," Jared told the nurse as he slipped out of the room, leaving the door open a crack.

Jensen was in the armchair by the fire, holding the baby in his two hands and peering into the tiny face, which was crumpled at the moment in a wrinkled frown. Jared's husband drank in the smallest detail: the flicker of fingers, the flutter of eyelids. Jensen’s expression was one of wonder. Jared knew how that felt – being almost afraid to look away and miss the miracle of another revelation of movement.

The baby squirmed and stretched, flinging out his arms before drawing his legs in, toes curled, and pulling both his arms toward his mouth. He yawned, and his whole face seemed to disappear for an instant, before everything smoothed out again and he relaxed in Jensen's hold.

Jared bent to plant a kiss on top of Jensen's head, and to stroke the baby's cheek with the back of a gentle finger. "Pretty awesome, huh?"

The face Jensen raised to him was washed in love and awe, and a tinge of regret. Jared put a fingertip on Jensen's lips, then slipped that hand around his nape, warm and familiar. "Don't, Jensen," he admonished. "What's done is in the past. Let it go."

Jensen held what he had been going to say unspoken for half a moment, then let out a little gust of a sigh and a nod.

He had never held their babies like this. Jared had hated and regretted that at the time, but he wouldn’t force it on him. And now, Jared could see Jensen's regret. But he meant what he'd told him: they couldn't change the past. But they could revel in the present.

"Can I hold him?"

 

– The scrape and clang of metal on metal brought him instantly to full wakefulness, but he held himself still, listening intently. Not the door of his cell then, nor the door to the corridor outside his cell. He concentrated on taking slow, shallow breaths – inhale, exhale, smooth and easy – to calm his jackrabbiting heart. The last time he'd taken a deep breath it had hurt his ribs so badly he'd truly wished, for a moment, to die. The regular breathing was working, though, his heart was calming.

He curled his long, rawboned frame into a ball to conserve heat against the damp chill, and willed himself to sleep. Maybe the dream would come again. Or maybe another one, beautiful and bright, of the ordinary life he once had lived.

* * *

 

**More Than Ever** _Chapter One_

 

Jensen was putting the final touches on lunch when the phone rang. There was no caller ID.

"'lo?"

"Dad." Mac's voice sounded off. "Dad, Pop's been picked up."

Jensen put the spoon down and wiped his hands on the towel. "Mac? You okay?"

"Yeah." The voice wobbled on the single syllable, but steadied. "Yeah, I'm fine."

"Tell me," Jensen prompted, in as calm a tone as he could manage. Shannon and JJ arrived back from their walk just then, fluttering and fussing over getting the baby out of the stroller and getting the stroller inside and parked out of the way. Jensen caught Shannon's eye and gestured toward the stove. She nodded understanding, and Jensen walked quickly from the common room to the back of the house. He shut the study door behind him and leaned on it for support. "What happened?"

"It was at a rally last night – just the usual kind of gathering. Some people who're working for Elgin and Brown were there, but they weren't scheduled to speak." As he continued to talk, Mac's voice settled. "A couple of vans pulled up, cops poured out, and they just started grabbing people. Larissa saw it across the crowd: Pop stumbled on purpose in front of some cops to give people near him time to get away, and the cops grabbed him. They threw him in a van with about half a dozen other people. Everybody else scattered so fast, and they didn't seem interested in chasing runners. They just got back in the vans, slammed the doors, and took off."

Jensen sagged against the solid door. His knees were water and he wanted to give way, but he steadied himself, and his voice, before he asked. "Where is he now?"

"That's the thing." The anxiety in Mac's voice racked up a notch. "I called Grampa right away, and he called Mr. Clark. Grampa thought it was best if somebody went in who knows how to navigate the system," Mac explained, and Jensen nodded. If anybody knew, it would be Art.

"And?" Jensen prompted when Mac hesitated.

"A couple of people got license plate numbers, and we tracked the vans down to the precinct where they're stationed. Mr. Clark went into the station to ask after Pop and the others who were arrested. Only the police there insisted they weren't holding anybody by those names, or descriptions."

"What?" That didn't make sense.

"Yeah," Mac agreed with Jensen. "Not only that, but there was no record of arrests for anybody matching those names or descriptions – anywhere in the city. Mr. Clark's on it right now." Mac tried to sound confident, but it didn't really ring true. "But the thing is, if he wasn't arrested, and the police aren't holding him and the others, and they don't have any record of them being picked up, then where are they?"

Where, indeed?

Jensen was already mentally making lists for the kids and packing his suitcase when he told his eldest, "Okay, Mac, listen. I'm on the first flight I can get. I'll call you with arrival times. Can somebody – "

"Dad – "

Feverishly making plans, Jensen talked right over the interruption. "Yeah, can somebody pick me up at the airport? Or should I grab a cab? What do you think?"

"Dad!"

"Mackie, hold on, okay? I'll be there as soon as I – "

"Jensen." The deep, calm voice of Gerald Padalecki reached through Jensen's rising panic. "Stop and listen to me a minute."

He took a deep breath. And then another. "Gerry, hi."

"Hey, son. Listen, I don't think you need to be here right now."

"But – "

"No, listen to me. We don't really have any idea what's going on, or what's going to happen. And until we do, there's really not anything you can do here."

"But, I need – " Jensen pushed away from the door and took a step or two, wrapped tight, full of tension and needing to move, to go, to do something. Gerry's voice reached right past all that, and started making sense.

"What you need, right now?" Gerry said, calm and reassuring. "Is to stay where you are and take care of the kids. Let them know what's going on. They're going to need you to help them with this news."

Jensen wanted to argue. "Gerry, I need to be there when he gets out. I need to – "

"I promise you, son. I promise that just as soon as we know anything, you'll know. You can hop on a plane and be here in a few hours. Donna and Alan have already said they'll fly over to be with the kids – or with JJ, if Shannon wants to come with you – so they'll be taken care of while you're gone."

Jensen's knees gave way and he sat, abruptly, on the edge of the sofa. Tears suddenly blurred his vision, and he swallowed down a load of fear and panic, and found his voice. "Promise me. Just as soon as you hear anything."

"You have my word, Jensen. Are you going to be okay? Do you need Shari or your parents to fly over now to stay a few days? I'd offer myself, but – "

"No," Jensen replied quickly. "No, I'm good, thanks. And I'm glad you're there where you are. If anybody can find him, or find people who can find him, and get him out, it's you. I trust you."

"Thank you, son." Gerry sounded touched, and paused for a moment to recover himself.

"So," Jensen took advantage of the pause, "Mac's okay? How's Shari? Does everybody know – Jeff, and Megan? How are they all handling it?"

"Shari's upset, of course," Gerry confided. "But she's a strong person, she'll get through the shock, and you know she'll be strong for everybody else."

Jensen nodded, smiling at the apt description of his mother-in-law.

"Mac's blaming himself, I think," Gerry went on. "I'm dealing with it, but you might want to be aware should it come up," he said.

"What? Why?"

"I don't know, Jensen. You should ask him." There were voices in the background, and a hand over the receiver as Gerry spoke to someone in the room with him before speaking into the receiver again. "Look, Jensen, I need to go. I've got meetings with a couple of people that might help us. If you're sure you're okay…"

"Yeah," Jensen was suddenly anxious for Gerry to meet with anyone who could help, who could move this effort forward, find his husband and get him released and back where he belonged. "No, you go ahead. You call me, okay? Any time at all, with any news you have."

"I will, I promise."

"Good," Jensen nodded, even though Gerry couldn't see. "And Gerry? Find him. Bring him home."

"Do my best, son. Love to the kids."

And the line went dead.

 

Oh god, what had happened to Jared? Where was he?

* * *

 

"Jensen, the climate is changing, it's amazing to see how fast." Jared stood by the low dresser they were using for a changing table, cleaning Seamus up and getting him into a clean diaper. Jensen had to marvel at his husband's expertise, his quick and practiced movements as he opened the diaper and draped a tissue over the baby's groin. "We had Peepee Teepees for Mac and JJ," Jared grinned at Jensen's puzzled look. The comment failed to clarify the purpose of the tissue, though.

"I should just send you in to change him without warning," Jared snickered, cleaning the tiny bottom with a wipe and applying a swipe of diaper cream. He removed the soiled diaper and whisked a clean one into place as he explained. "Baby boys tend to, um, 'geyser' when you take the diaper off and cold air hits them." Jared folded the front of the diaper into place, whisking the tissue out like a magician performing a vanishing trick, and taped the diaper snug.

Oh. Yeah. Jensen nodded, understanding at last.

One hand on Seamus' tummy, the other gathered wipe and tissue in the used diaper, toed open the lidded pail and dropped the package inside. "Take him," he instructed Jensen, and stepped into the bathroom to wash his hands. Seamus gurgled contentedly and mouthed at Jensen's neck, held against his chest with a big hand gently patting his back.

"Like I was telling you," Jared picked up the abandoned thread of conversation as he rejoined them. "The atmosphere is changing, noticeably. Neither Elgin nor Brown has actually come out and said they were against Repro. At this point it would be political suicide, if not prosecutable as outright treason, under the present laws."

Jared leaned in to peck Seamus on the top of his fuzzy head, and drop another kiss on Jensen's cheek in passing. "But they are leaving hints right and left, and if you read between the lines, they're right next to making promises, if they get elected."

"And they're getting away with that?" Jensen remembered things being a lot stricter than Jared was describing.

"It's public awareness, Jensen. It's the underground movement's influence finally – _finally_ – becoming apparent in everyday society. It's what the movement has worked for all these years. Long before I was a part of it, people were risking a lot, sometimes everything, to make the public aware of exactly how Repro was running things. How they diverted and changed lives, sometimes destroyed families, all without once giving the people most involved a choice whether to be a part of it or not."

Jensen nosed the soft down and sweet baby smell of the top of Seamus' head, and chose not to answer, though he nodded at Jared.

"It's been a very long time coming, and lots of people have paid for it," Jared said, a little somber, before smiling wide again. "But people are daring to think about it. To discuss it openly, to consider some possible alternatives. It's – after everything, it's pretty amazing."

Jensen regarded the bright eyes and smile, the easy, open posture of the man he loved, and was suddenly humbled and grateful and glad. "Here," he shifted the baby toward his grandpapa. "Take the nubbin. I'm gonna go check on his dad."

* * *

"There's so much to do," Jared said. Jensen could feel the energy humming off him as they hiked up the little hill that shielded the village from the prevailing winds. Avoiding ankle-breaking holes and rocks that threatened to roll underfoot took part of his attention; the rest he gave to Jared as he continued. "The groundwork's been laid. And if we're going to take advantage of it – if we use that to push the agenda, now that we're starting to have some momentum – everybody has to pitch in."

"Surely the movement can do without you for a while," Jensen suggested. "A week, a few weeks. You're just one person, Jared. You and Mac, just two people. You've both done your part, why don't you let someone else – "

Jared was shaking his head as he reached a hand down to help haul Jensen up a slope strewn with loose rock. "I don't think for a minute that I'm invaluable," he assured his husband. "But there are things I know and people and resources I have access to and knowledge about – it would take someone else longer to do what needs to be done." He regarded Jensen, almost pleading for him to understand. "And Mac's a genius at facilitating – he's in and out before anybody knows any different. He puts teams together, knows what strengths and weaknesses people have, and matches them so they work, you know?"

Jensen shook his head. Evidently, he didn't know his elder son, not this aspect of him, anyway. "No, I really had no idea."

"Well, he's good at it. And even though he's still nineteen, people listen to him. He knows what he's doing, and he makes everybody working with him feel important and valuable, and because of it, they work hard for him."

Jensen felt a little glow of pride at the words of praise for their son, even as he admitted a little wistfully that this was a part of Mac's life he had deliberately shut himself out of, by turning a blind eye to activities he couldn't approve. He had begun to regret his earlier decision, now. As fearful as he was about Mac's safety, involved in illegal and dangerous activities, Jensen wished for the first time that he was close enough to the kid to know more, to understand.

They had reached the summit, now they turned back to look down on the village. It wasn't a high hill; the view didn't offer any special insight, even when Jensen stared at the tiny people going about their dailies as if seeking some observable wisdom. Jared was patient, to a point. But finally he prompted a response. "Jensen?"

His gaze didn't change, and he hesitated another minute, before taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly. "What do you want me to say, Jared? It's okay? I understand? Of course you both have important work to do? Don't let me keep you? Goodbye and good luck?"

Jared moved restively, wanting – well, wanting Jensen to mean the things he'd just said sarcastically, and knowing he didn't, knowing that being who he was meant that Jensen couldn't. But still, Jared had hoped for some concession this time. For some easing of the fear that was always with Jensen, to make way for some pride in what they were doing. For a little encouragement, even approval.

"I do understand," Jensen's gaze met his, at last. "I hate it, I worry because I know what could happen, to both of you." As Jared opened his mouth, Jensen waved off his protestations of being careful and that nothing was going to happen to them. He'd heard it before. "I know. I know you're careful, and precautions are taken. I know all that. But I still worry. It doesn't mean I don't know you're making a difference, or that I'm not proud of you. I just wish – "

"What?"

"I wish that every time I think of you or Mac I didn't get a horrible sick feeling in my stomach."

"Jensen."

He evaded the hand reaching toward him to offer comfort. "Not your fault, man. Except that you're still going. But it's what I live with, until I hear from you, you know? So call me. Text. Give me something. 'Cause I go crazy thinking something's happened to you, to either of you, or both."

 

They had a warm and happy festive supper, all of them under one roof. JJ even came to the table to eat, sat between his siblings and was teased and hugged and made much of. Seamus was passed from embrace to embrace when he got cranky at being left lonely and terribly neglected in his carrier seat, wedged in the extra chair. He wound up on Mac's chest when dessert was over, and Shannon and Jared cleared the table and teamed up on the dishes. JJ went back to bed, and Jensen sat and watched his firstborn with the baby.

"We're going to miss you, Mac."

A small expression of impatience marred the soft, fond look he had bent on Seamus. "Dad – "

"Statement of fact, kiddo, not a ploy to make you feel guilty," Jensen said. Green eyes flashed up to meet his own. "Your brother and sister and I are going to miss you. You take care of yourself." Jensen stood, and walked behind Mac's chair, bending to plant a kiss on his hair. "No stupid risks, okay?" He waited for the nod. "We want you back, Mackie. Safe and sound."

Mac leaned into him for just a fleeting moment, then turned to meet his gaze again. "I promise, Dad."

Jensen managed a smile, and stroked the baby's cheek with a knuckle. "You got him?"

"Yeah," he bounced the infant gently. "We're good."

"I'm gonna go see if his daddy needs anything."

 

Mac came along a few minutes later, and the two brothers sprawled on the bed, the baby between them, and Jensen left them alone. He picked up a book in the den, but couldn't settle on reading. He closed his eyes and listened to the house, to the voices of the family he loved and how they filled it up – the same way they filled up his heart. When would he have this again? When would they all be together again? He didn't know how he was supposed to deal with this, but he'd better get a handle on it, and quick, or he'd waste what time there was left.

Jared and Shannon were having a close talk, and as they finished up the dishes and hung the towels to dry, Jared hugged her fiercely, and she hugged him back, before both of them went to JJ's room. They stayed for a few minutes, and then Jared left the siblings to their last evening together, and headed upstairs, to pack, Jensen knew. He followed soon after.

He took the socks and underwear from Jared's hands, and put those hands on his own hips, moving in to nose under Jared's jaw. His own hands working at the button and zipper of Jared's jeans, he leaned up to kiss Jared's lips, leaving them slick and wet.

"Gonna miss you," he breathed across those lips, and as he'd planned, Jared shuddered and forgot all about packing, about meeting his plane in the morning, about anything but the armful of Jensen right in front of him. He threw back his head, giving complete access to his jaw and throat, and Jensen sucked and nibbled and nipped, walking them back toward the bed as he worked loose the buttons of Jared's shirt. When Jared's legs bumped against the mattress, Jensen pushed him back onto the sheets, stripping down his jeans and boxer briefs in a couple of practiced jerks, revealing Jared's dick already half at attention. Jared raised up enough to shrug off his shirt, and Jensen pulled the t-shirt over his head, leaving his hair in a glorious tangle. Jared made grabby hands, which Jensen eluded till he had stepped out of his own jeans and boxers and stripped off his Henley. They toed out of shoes and socks, leaving them to lie where they fell. Clothes were puddled all over the floor – a minefield should either of them need the bathroom in the dark, but they would worry about that later. Much later.

Jared ran a hand up Jensen's flank, cupping his shoulder as he tugged him closer, his free hand wrapping around Jensen's erection as he pulled him down onto the bed. Jensen gasped and thrust into the hard grip that tightened just right and then loosened a little so he could stroke back and forth. He kissed Jared savagely, biting at his lips as he pulled himself off and moved down to lie between Jared's legs.

"Jensen," Jared moaned in protest, reaching to pull him back into his embrace, but Jensen swallowed his cock in a couple of wet strokes, tonguing the fat vein on the underside. "Jensen!" he cried again, but this time he couldn't help bucking up into that wet heat, and forgetting all about getting his husband back in his arms.

His head rolled on the pillow and he gasped as Jensen used tongue and teeth and exquisite suction to bring him close, before easing off to maddeningly unsatisfying kitten-licks.

"Driving me crazy, man," Jared whined, and Jensen's mouth swallowed him down again. He could feel Jensen's throat working as it opened up and took in the head, and then tightened convulsively as Jensen swallowed around it. He almost missed the click of the bottle cap, but he felt the gasps around his cock as Jensen worked a couple of fingers into himself. With a last, slow graze of teeth up the underside of Jared's cock, Jensen pulled off, and kneed up to straddle Jared's hips.

Taking Jared in one hand, he stroked the tip between his cheeks, over his hole, before he snubbed it up against his opening. He fixed Jared with a focused stare, eyes dancing and crinkled at the corners. "Hey, baby," he smiled, and slid slowly, inexorably, down until Jared was all inside, and Jensen's ass rested against Jared's thighs. Jared could feel the tremble of effort in his thighs, and he smoothed his palms over Jensen's legs, his gaze locked on his husband's face. "Hey back," he smiled.

Jensen moved then, beginning a slow, tantalizing rise and fall, teasing and testing, and never...quite...giving Jared what he wanted, what he was waiting for. He ran a broad palm over Jensen's belly, feeling the familiar scar as he stroked over it. The muscles bunched and relaxed as Jensen lifted and lowered himself. Jared assessed his expression and knew from past experience that Jensen could keep up this exquisite torture for a very long time – and that was probably his plan for tonight.

But it wasn't Jared's. And in a sudden shift of power, he lifted Jensen off him with both hands, turning to plant him on his back and hook his knees over Jared's forearms. Jensen squawked in surprise and protest, but Jared reseated his cock and drove in, and all Jensen could do was curse and lift his hips to meet the thrust. "Fuck! Jared!"

"Yes," Jared grinned down at him, with a hard, slow roll of his hips. "And _yes._ "

 

Jensen woke in the dark, the empty spot in the sheets still warm. Against the starlight and the barest hint of dawn through the window he could see Jared's silhouette as he picked up his discarded clothes from last night. "'z it time?" he asked muzzily.

"Shh, go back to sleep," Jared told him. "You don't need to get up."

Jensen yawned like his jaw would unhinge and shook himself, and pulled out from under the covers, scrabbling on the floor for his own jeans. "'m already up," he answered. He stepped close and wrapped his arms around Jared from behind, stilling him in the middle of finishing his packing. Jared turned in his arms and hugged him back, groaning a little at the expanse of naked Jensen and his morning wood.

"No time, man," he complained, hugging tighter and planting a kiss in Jensen's hair before reluctantly stepping away to finish packing.

"Mac up?"

"He should be. You want to go check for sure?"

Jensen grunted noncommittally but stepped into his jeans and pulled them up as he headed for the door. It closed behind him, and Jared heard the mutter of soft voices, and the pad of bare feet down the stairs. Jared turned on the bedside lamp and the bathroom light to check for items he hadn't packed the night before. He had a quick shower and shaved, and soon the aroma of coffee drifted up from the kitchen.

By the time Jared got downstairs with his bag, Mac's was propped by the door, and Mac and Shannon had joined Jensen in the kitchen. Plates of bacon, toast, and scrambled eggs were passed, and the big coffee mugs. Jensen had a plate ready when JJ joined them. There wasn't much conversation, just the scrape of forks on plates as they finished eating.

Mac glanced at his watch and rose to put his plate in the sink before he disappeared toward JJ's room. "I won't wake him," he promised. "I just want to peek and say goodbye."

Jared joined him, and all too soon they were back, with lingering, tight hugs for JJ and Shannon, and picking up their bags.

Jensen kissed his younger two. "Need me to pick up anything on the way back?"

He retrieved his keys from the dish on the table by the door to drive them to the airport.

Jensen hugged them both, not wanting to let go, not knowing how long it would be this time before he was able to hold them again. He kissed Mac on the cheek in spite of the kid's professed embarrassment, and gave Jared a peck on the lips – neither of them willing to start something here they couldn't finish. He watched until they cleared security, waving when they looked back before they were out of sight.

* * *

Just the day before yesterday Jared had called, asking how JJ was doing, thanking him for sending photos of Seamus, and sending Jensen and the kids love from their grandparents. Jensen's gut twisted at the remembered sound of Jared's voice, so close he might have been standing beside him. His laugh, his gunfire-rapid list of relatives sending their regards.

Jared had been eager to share a little of the changes he could see happening in public attitude, in curiosity toward – and a building willingness to consider – new approaches to old problems. The political climate was changing, slowly, but surely. Repro could no longer claim ultimate savior status for itself. News of its practices was wider spread, and growing. And some few, quiet voices were whispering "abuse" in regard to those practices.

Demand was growing for information and progress on infertility research, and what efforts the Department was making in that direction. Repro blustered a bit in public, but their spokesmen had not been forthcoming with real answers. And the testing and inducting of ceivers continued, seemingly unaffected by public opinion.

But Jared was excited by the change. He reported that Mac was healthy, still working hard, proud of making a difference. Jensen suggested that Jared bring up the subject of college again, and was assured Jared was already up to speed on that campaign. As things moved forward and Mac could see actual progress, maybe he'd be able to step back from the active fight, and continue his education.

But Jensen had heard the tone in Mac's voice, the iron determination, part of it stemming from self-blame. The kid believed he was responsible for Jared getting into the movement in the first place. Jensen looked hard at that, when he found a moment alone, and admitted to himself that he had shared that sentiment at first, and for a long time after. Jared had followed Mac into the fringes of the underground to keep watch over him, to keep him safe. But looking back with unflinching honesty, Jensen believed now that it was Jared's sense of guilt, and his urge to atone for his own part in maintaining Repro's agenda, that fueled his exploration of the rebel movement. And for that, Jensen himself was as much to blame as Mac. There were no reparations that needed to be made between Jared and him. Jensen hoped and believed, and had tried to convince Jared, that they had come far beyond that.

If that was true, if Jared believed and accepted that, then that left Jared himself. His sense of fairness, of belief in the freedom of every person, and his willingness to fight for that right for ceivers. Mac was not to blame for Jared's involvement, no more than Jensen himself was. And Jensen needed some time with their son to convince him of that, and make him accept it.

But Mac was reluctant to visit, though Shannon and JJ both begged him to come, and Jensen tried to guilt him about missing Seamus' milestones. Mac was determined to stay in the US and help the search for his papa however he could. For that, Jensen couldn't blame him. In fact, he wished he could be there to help. But the rest of their family needed him here, so he tried to leave it with Gerry and Mac and whoever else was working to find Jared and get him free.

 

JJ appeared to be thriving. He was doing excellently in his courses, and he seemed to have an instinct for the needs of his son. Seamus was an easy baby, as JJ had been, and the whole household was grateful for that, as well as being besotted with him. Seamus had his father's fair hair and pale blue eyes, and even a tendency to his square jaw, though with an infant it was difficult to tell. JJ got a look in his eyes every now and then when he looked at the baby, but he hadn't once brought up Glenn since he had accepted the need to let that possibility go.

He and Shannon were reconnecting with old friends in the village; there was even another ceiver boy, a couple of years older than JJ, living consensually with his pere and their two-year-old daughter. More and more friends dropped by the house, or asked either or both of them over for a meal, or just to hang out. Both of them seemed happy and content here, at least until this worrisome news.

Shannon was the best auntie any little boy could hope for, attentive, but raucous and playful too, and patient when Seamus was sometimes cranky and hard to settle, and JJ was over his limit. Shannon was in school during the day, and challenging her teachers, if Jensen was to believe the notes they scrawled on her papers, and the occasional remark at parent nights.

Jensen made careful notes and observations, partly for himself to remember these moments years from now, and partly for Jared, so he wouldn't miss them entirely. He took photos and videos, too, and in those times when the kids were out with friends and it was just Jensen and Seamus at home, or out with the stroller, Jensen talked to Seamus about his grampa, told him all the funny and tender things he could remember. And just between the two of them, he shared some of the assholic and jackassery things about Grampa, too. Fair is fair, after all – if Jared wanted to defend himself he could just get his ass home. "Don't tell Daddy I said 'ass', Shay."

Next year would be the last of the local school for Shannon, and she would have to decide very soon where she wanted to go to college. They had arranged for her grandparents to accompany her on a tour of schools in the US where she had already applied, or planned to. Or they would fly over and stay with JJ and Seamus while Jensen toured her top choices with her. But that was for the summer and holidays in the year ahead, and by then, Jared would be home and able to tour with her, too.

 

All of them avidly followed the international coverage of US news, hoping daily to hear something to give them cause to hope.

* * *


	2. More Than Ever | J2 AU NC-17 |

 

The office was clean, bare, nondescript, and that could be said for the building it was in, as well. Anonymous, Malik nodded to himself, and reserved further judgment until he'd finished the interview.

He'd heard about the job through the movement's grapevine. The underground was still active with information, even though a higher profile in the press and the greater awareness the public had now meant that meetings and rallies were fewer and farther apart. There was very little provocative activity these days. Those involved with the movement were lying low, and waiting to learn if the shifting political climate would actually lead to change, real, legal procedure and policy change. He thought of it as 'don't poke the lion when it's finally headed in the direction you want it to go.'

Months ago, he'd seen a couple of photographs online; Morgan was mentioned as Brown's choice to head up an untitled "task force", depending on the outcome of next year's elections. There wasn’t much elaboration on the purpose of the task force, or its goals, and awareness of its existence faded into the background in all the political posturing and lightshow.

So he recognized Morgan when he walked in, flanked by an older man. Malik stood to shake the offered hand.

"Mr. Whitfield," Morgan glanced at the folder in his hand. "Charles?"

"Malik, sir," he replied, shaking hands with the other man.

"Jim Beaver," he introduced himself.

"If you come to work for me," Morgan told him. "You and Jim will be working together."

Malik flashed a quick dimple. "Nice to meet you, Jim."

"Remains to be seen," grunted Beaver. But there was a little glint in his blue eyes and a softness around his mouth that might be the suspicion of a smile.

"Says here," Morgan took a seat at the table and gestured for the other men to do the same, flipping through the folder. "You've been on the force for a while, coming up on qualifying for detective? Is this the time for you to be leaving the force to take another job?"

Here was the hard sell. Malik took a quick breath and met Morgan's gaze. "I've already turned in my resignation with the department," he said. "There are rules and practices in place there...I just can't work like that any more."

Morgan shot a glance under his brows at Beaver, who nodded in return with no change of expression. "You realize we're going to check out everything you tell us here today?"

Malik nodded.

"And we've already checked you out," Beaver added. "Seems like you've been involved in some pretty sketchy extracurricular activity, according to your bosses' evaluations of your performance."

Malik met Beaver's cold, assessing gaze and nodded again. "That's one of the reasons I'm ready to move on. I had a choice to make, and I followed my conscience. And my personal beliefs. I got tired of setting those aside to follow the letter of the law."

"You've given up family to Repro, is that right?" Morgan was paging through the papers in the folder again, but he paused to fix Whitfield with an opaque stare.

"My nephews." He didn't elaborate, and after a beat or two, Morgan declined to pursue it.

"Seems you stuck with the PD for a pretty long while after your nephews were taken," Morgan mused. "And we know you were involved with the underground most of that time. Why'd you stay as long as you did? And what changed?"

Malik leaned back in his chair and ran a hand over his close-clipped hair, taking a moment before he answered. "I thought I could do some good, at first. Just a cop, you know?"

Both men nodded, and he went on. "I had no idea there was any kind of organized resistance to the law of the land – I just thought everybody obeyed because it was the law. Then I stumbled into a couple of rallies. And rather than arresting people, I started listening. I got into activism gradually."

He sighed, and leaned forward again. "I tried to do some good, with what authority and access I had. Information, so I could warn people of planned raids. Reroute escapes, change rally locations and times. Even spring some people who'd been arrested by losing or screwing up the paperwork."

"They started suspecting you," Beaver stated. It was a fact, and Malik nodded.

"It got harder to help. And it got harder to stay when I couldn't help." He met Morgan's gaze. "And then I got word of what Brown is putting together, and I want to be a part of that. It sounds like something I have some background in. I can be effective, and I can do the work and still sleep at night."

Morgan and Beaver exchanged another expressionless glance, and Morgan tapped the papers into order, tucked them back into the folder and stood. He offered a hand to Whitfield again. "Thanks for coming in," he said while Malik shook Beaver's hand as well. "We'll be in touch."

 

* * *

There is daily life to get on with, expecting they'll hear something this week, that Jared will be found, that Jared will be back with them the week after, next month, tomorrow. There's the normalcy of grocery shopping and laundry and trying to get stains out of the carpet so they can let the baby crawl on the floor. Because the baby's crawling now, figured out how to get those arms and legs working together, and man, can he haul butt. Jared would – Jared will laugh when he gets a load of this kid.

Jared's already missed so much: the first time Seamus rolled over, the first smile, sitting up, the first tooth. He pulled up on the playpen rim the other day, but only wavered for a minute before plopping down on his butt with a thump. And now he's crawling, fast as he can, growing by leaps and bounds and Jared's not here, he's missing it. There's not any place Jensen can send the video recordings he faithfully makes for Jared.

Jensen takes a deep breath and stuffs it all down again and leans over Seamus where he's tucked into Shannon's shoulder and blows a raspberry on his pudgy little neck, before giving up with the spot cleaner and going to the building center to rent a steam carpet cleaner.

Jensen stays busy, and he stays cheerful. It's hard not to laugh at Seamus, and the kids are happy, but they miss their Pop, he knows. They all work at being positive for each other. But they're all clued in to each other, too, and if one of them falters, face crumpling, the others are there, arms reaching and holding, and patting on the back. Some mutual sniffling and "I miss him, too," before wiping the tears away and stepping back, squaring the shoulders and summoning a smile. "We'll hear something soon. They'll find him." And nodding, nodding agreement, shoring each other up in mutual hope and reassurance.

And Jensen shops and writes music, or really, what he does is rework old lyrics and melodies and then discard them when they all turn out either sad or angry. He talks to the guys in the band and parents and in-laws on Skype and searches the Internet for news, and shares the cooking and laundry with his kids and laughs at the baby and has a busy, productive life with people he loves. And he goes to bed at night and sinks into the mattress, the covers tight around him, the extra pillows lined up at his back for the illusion of warmth, and he recalls the ghost of weight and breath and warmth against his skin, of the mattress giving under movement other than his own, and he reaches for the memory, but even as he does, it pales to nothing and slips away, leaving him cold and alone. And he shakes with fear for his husband, in whatever awful place he might be, and aches with missing him, and though he tries to abstain until he has Jared back, his hand slips down to fold around his aching cock and jerk himself to some minor, fleeting, bitter relief.

* * *

 

From its earliest days, the underground movement against Repro was a secret. Family members, friends, conscientious objectors to Repro's methods met in secret, in living rooms, in basements, until fear of discovery and punishment of the rest of their loved ones drove them into more anonymous, usually abandoned public places. News of meetings was by word of mouth, by coded messages over phone trees – no more than a contact on the level of the tree above and the one below known to any individual – or cryptic notes left at pre-arranged drops. Their focus was utter secrecy and the aiding of walkaways and escapees, first to escape from their situation, and then to find safe ways out of the country. There was no unified or organized rebellion; each small local group worked alone, in full expectation of discovery, and in confidence and determination that if caught, one would not betray those few individuals one had worked with. This was how the underground worked for generations, for decades. It was surprising how many had been spirited out to freedom, and how few, overall, had paid the cost.

News coverage was supervised and controlled by the government, and any reports of activism were presented as attacks against the government, as threats to the American way of life, as attempts to sabotage the Department of Reproduction's heroic efforts to stem the falling birth rate, and bring ruination to the populace. Rebels and activists were enemies of the state, and of the people.

The Internet was the thin end of the wedge against public opinion. Articles and opinion pieces appeared on obscure websites, got picked up and repeated on more mainstream ones. Arguments broke out in comments, and hit-and-run posters had the technological knowhow – or the help of those who had it – to abandon and obscure ISP addresses and server trails. Code and shorthand evolved to identify fellow sympathizers, to inform of rally points and rescues. The network of sympathizers grew, most of them still unknown to each other except through the Internet's facility for them to remain deliberately obscure.

As public awareness began to awaken to the fact that Repro's tactics and methods were as destructive and draconian as they were productive, public opinion turned, agonizingly slowly, it seemed for those who had been in the resistance for years, for decades. Viewed from a historical perspective, however, the transition was blindingly fast. Rallies and rescues were written about and the articles avidly read and shared, rather than condemned and disapproved of, now that the public was beginning to follow and cheer, quietly and circumspectly, for the underground and its efforts.

Anonymized stories of walkaways and their reasons for leaving their government-formed families behind, of families who had been torn apart and devastated by the loss of their children, garnered sympathy and outrage in those who read and shared such stories. Discussion in the comments following such stories raised more awareness of the consequences and results of the government's implacable methods. Argument and rebuttal fired opinion and emotional commitment to change – and firm resistance to change, as well. But the tide was turning.

And after decades of silence and repression, the subject was finally becoming an open enough public concern to influence the political climate. From civic to national, incumbents and potential candidates began to coin a new language to indicate where their sympathies lay, and how far they were prepared to commit to change. Dissention was still against the law, rebellion was still a crime which brought charges of treason, so while some politicians and their constituents wished to bring about change, it was understood that arrest and imprisonment was no way to accomplish that goal.

But the movement was an open secret now, even as its workers and its plans still clung to secrecy as an effective tactic.

* * *

 

Donna and Alan made time to come celebrate Seamus' first birthday. Shari and Megan came as well, and after hugging Shari tight, Jensen patted Megan's belly and hugged her too, more gently. "He would be so happy for you!" he whispered.

Mackenzie's new daughter was too young to travel so far, so Mack and her husband were at home with her. Neither Josh nor Jeff was able to take time off work, and they were reluctant to organize traveling with their families at the moment. Gerry continued to work for Jared's release, and Mac stayed so he would be on the ground if anything new came to light. No matter how Jensen argued, everyone would not be here for Seamus' first birthday.

Jensen moved among the ones who had come, the neighbors and the kids from Seamus' play group and their parents, threading a path among the balloons and streamers and the piles of wrapped presents. JJ sat bouncing Shay in his lap, and Jensen smiled, and took video and smiled some more, and chatted with everyone.

He ached inside, so much he wished his heart would burst and kill him and get it over with. Where was Jared, in all this? Why wasn't he here?

Oh look – Seamus swimming in a huge plastic bib, his cake set in front of him with a single candle flickering. Jensen brought up the camera and hit REC. The baby looked intimidated at all the singing, all the eyes on him, waiting to see what he would do. JJ blew out the candle and everybody laughed and clapped. Shannon swiped a finger in the frosting and wiped it on Seamus' lower lip; he tasted it, and his eyes lit up. He lunged for the cake, one starfish hand splatting right on top of it, then going straight for his eager, open mouth. The party burst with laughter and chatter, and Jensen hid behind the camera and recorded it all.

* * *

 

There were quite a few up and coming candidates for office at local, state, and federal levels who disagreed with the present state of the union, and were ready for change. Their constituents were unhappy and growing more dissatisfied with the Department of Reproduction and the laws that protected it and gave it such sweeping power. A growing number of legislators and politicians favored change in the laws that empowered the Department of Reproduction, that kept their dealings secret from the public, and free of oversight. Successive amendments over time to those original laws had expanded and increased their influence and control, and the Department had lost any transparency it once may have had regarding its methods and procedures.

The demand for accountability was growing, and the public was tired of being kept in the dark about what types of research their taxes went to fund, and what progress that research was making. The resistance, funded by contributions, continued to produce print, television, and online ads, essays, and interviews aimed at increasing public awareness that perhaps Repro's iron tactics weren't the only way to solve the population problem. Further, that the the rights and liberties of those people whom Repro deemed vital in keeping population numbers from falling any lower were certainly brushed aside as less important than Repro's program. Families who had given up sons to Repro were beginning to give voice to the distress, and protested that they had been forced, by law and by public custom, to keep silent. And the general public was listening.

Defying Reproductive law was still illegal, so political candidates and their staffs and advocates gave carefully worded speeches, crafted responses to questions that came up again and again in post-speech question-and-answer sessions. Coded phrases and understood language became commonplace, and the political climate moved inexorably toward change. Workers for the resistance continued to provide information by mostly discreet, or at least untraceable means. There were even a few rallies, but most of those were dying out; it was too much of a risk. Repro was fighting back, using the law of the land as the tool and the weapon it had been crafted to be. Even so, and though still cautious, hope was the growing mood of the voting public as their attention and loyalty shifted from the old guard to the upcoming elections, and hope for a new administration.

Walker Dane Elgin and Sterling K. Brown won their party's nomination for the Presidential and Vice Presidential race. Long before the campaign began in earnest, Elgin sat Brown down for a strategy conversation. When the ceivers' existence and ability was first discovered and the program developed, research into the possible causes of declining pregnancy and live birth rates had all been gradually allowed to fall aside as the Department focused and directed funding toward detecting and training ceivers, and the re-education and indoctrination of the public as to the benefits of the ceiver program. Both Elgin and Brown intended and prepared to reactivate that research, to actively work to heavily fund it, even while research into detecting fertile girls was also ongoing.

Dismantling Repro's stranglehold was high on Elgin's agenda of reform, and on Brown's, as well, but there could be no overt campaigning on that platform; dissent was still illegal. Until they won, and could engineer and enact changes in the laws, they would have to tread carefully.

Elgin gave Brown the job of assembling a task force to prepare the groundwork for the eventual takedown, learning everything possible about how Repro had operated over the years. There were so many questions to ask, and so much to be held accountable for. What had happened to people who tried to oppose the Department? Very few of those taken into custody actually reached a courtroom, or a federal penitentiary; so what had happened to them? How were ceivers no longer capable, through age or injury, of childbearing and no longer wanted by their peres handled? Were they released as full citizens? Returned to the custody of their families, if such remained and could be found, and actually wanted them back? Were they kept in private, Repro-supervised facilities, and if so, where were the facilities located? Why was there no record of them? Were there ceivers who never settled to the life, or who rebelled later on in life? How were they handled – were they punished and kept imprisoned, impregnated against their will, the babies given to adoptive parents eager for children to raise? What happened to them when their reproductive years were over?

There was so much to find out, and no stone must be left unturned. They'd need all possible information and ammunition to win against the megalith. Brown was to begin assembling his team even before the election, and get them working on this, quietly. They could go public once the election was won, once Elgin had been sworn in and officially held office, and they had friends in both houses, as well as at every level of government.

 

* * *

Gerald Padalecki attended an election fundraiser where Elgin and Brown were the guests of honor. Having met each of them before, he said hello, and renewed his promise of support in getting them elected. He inquired if there was anything more he could do to help the investigation into finding his son. Brown agreed to look deeper into the situation, and Elgin indicated an interest he couldn't publicly acknowledge until after he was elected. But after Gerry moved away, Elgin asked Brown to keep him informed, and updated with any progress reports from Morgan.

 

* * *

Morgan's primary task was discovering facilities Repro had been less than forthcoming about: training and residence facilities, and in particular, detention centers which Repro kept hidden and secret. Agents collected and confiscated any and all records and documents they found, removing them to the task force office in DC to be sorted through and analyzed. The task force had a list and was adding names as they were discovered, uncovered, or recovered, of those arrested, or detained, for opposing Repro, either for trying to prevent a ceiver son being taken, or for activism with the movement.

And they had a list of questions that needed answers. They had no information on whether Repro had ever detained women – mothers, aunts, sisters of ceivers. Were they usually "pardoned" to care for any family remaining at home? Or had they been tried, convicted and sentenced to a term in a federal prison? If so, any trials must have been held in private, in a closed courtroom, because no record could be found of such trials. If trials had been held, and people convicted, were sentences ever served to completion? Was there a possibility of parole for these people, eventual release? Was there any sort of visitation program for Repro offenders in prison?

And similarly, were detainees ever released? Or was detention permanent?

There was a lot to do, and Morgan was just the man to organize and supervise the effort.

* * *

 

"I had a meeting with the candidate for Vice President this morning," Morgan told his staff, assembled around the conference table. "He's fidgety about getting things into gear, set up and ready to go before the election, with a public launch the morning after the inauguration."

Everyone sat up to attention, and Morgan continued. "So, are we good?"

Nods all around the table, and Beaver spoke. "It'll be nice to finally get to act on some of the information we've put together. I'm tired of sitting on it, waiting for the time to be right."

Morgan swept them all with a glance and a half-smile.

"Good. He brought up a couple of cases he wants special attention on, one of them in particular." He gestured to a man none of them knew who was also seated at the table. "This is Mr. Arthur Clark."

Nods were exchanged before everyone looked back to Jeff. "Mr. Clark is an attorney. He represents one of the major volunteers and contributors to the Elgin-Brown campaign, a personal friend of Sterling Brown, and of Mr. Elgin. The son of Mr. Clark's client was taken from a rally, nearly two years ago. There was no record of arrest, and no chain of custody. Police conducted the raid, under direction and orders of the Department of Reproduction, and then just handed off those protestors they'd picked up to officials from Repro, and nothing was ever seen or heard of them again. Mr. Padalecki is pushing the Vice President-elect rather urgently to look into what happened to his son, so we – "

"I'm sorry," Whitfield interrupted. "Did you say Padalecki? Jared?"

Clark eyed the younger man as Morgan glanced down at his notes. "Yes, Jared's his name. You know him?"

Whitfield nodded. "We worked together some, with the underground. Jared's a good guy. He's got kids – in fact, one of them's still in the movement, as far as I know. I haven't seen Mac in months. I don't know where he is, or what he's doing. I hadn't heard about Repro taking Jared."

"From what little there is on this case, it seems like a routine raid. I suppose they could have targeted this Jared guy, if they knew he was involved. But there's some eyewitness statements that indicate it was just a random raid." Morgan swept the table with a glance, and then came back to Malik. "I'll get with you later, in case you know anything that could help us track Jared."

Malik nodded and Morgan continued. "In the meantime, we need to find out what we can about what's happened to Mr. Padalecki. It's been more than a year and a half, where is he?" Morgan eyed each of his staff in turn as the Padaleckis' attorney looked on. "Why hasn't he been found?" Whitfield opened his mouth to respond, but Morgan continued. "They haven't even admitted to having him in custody – how long are they planning to hold him?"

Beaver shook his head. "As long as they want, at a guess. There's not been anybody, or any group or oversight committee to challenge Repro on – well, anything. Their policies, their methods, their tactics."

"For how long?" Morgan demanded.

"Since their inception," Beaver's reply was dour. "The country was so scared about the decline in birthrate and falling population, anything that promised some hope was welcomed. And when Repro appeared to be succeeding at halting – even possibly, someday, reversing – those numbers, nobody wanted to jeopardize that by interfering."

"Well," Mr. Clark interjected quietly, "some did try, early on." Everyone at the table turned to regard him. "There were some senators, some committees, who attempted to establish some checks and balances, some guidelines which Repro would have been required to respect." Encouraged by everyone's attention, he continued. "But when, soon after their creation and investiture as a government agency, an oversight committee attempted to call them on some of their practices, they pulled their ace – they were improving the birthrate statistics, and they needed free rein to accomplish their task."

There were nods around the table.

"So," Morgan asked. "The challenges just…dropped? The Department held – what? Our future, hostage in exchange for doing whatever they wanted?"

Beaver nodded and Art replied. "Yes, pretty much."

Morgan pressed the interoffice button. "Randa? You and Will get in here."

There was an answering garble from the speaker, and a moment later the inner office door opened to admit two more people to the gathering.

"Will, that research you were doing on legal challenges to Repro, what have you found, so far?"

"There are very few public records of anybody bringing a challenge against the Department," the younger man said, pulling a reporter's notebook from his pocket and flipping through it to check his notes. "None of the challenges I could find were resolved in favor of the plaintiff. Of the instances where parents or other family were defending against charges of attempting to keep a ceiver from Repro training, none were successful. All of those defendants were given prison sentences, and those who are still alive are still serving their time."

"Repro always wins, boss," Whitfield spoke softly into the quiet that followed Will's report.

Morgan stood unmoving for a moment, then gave a slight nod, including everyone assembled with an expression of dedication and commitment so fierce it smoldered at the edges.

"Not anymore," he promised. "Randa, we're going to need to play the press on this. They're hounds for anything that smacks of revolt and uproar, and we're going to get them on our side. Focus and hone them, and point them right at the public, working to get people riled up, aware of the facts, instead of the propaganda they've been fed all these years, and get them on our side. And then, we're going to blow the doors off Repro."

Randa nodded, but Jim and Malik exchanged a dubious glance.

"Boss?" Beaver had Morgan's attention. "Are you sure?" At Morgan's look of inquiry, he went on. "Everyone who's ever tried to take Repro on gets smacked down. Hell, they get thrown under the jail."

Whitfield and Morgan shared a swift expressionless glance as Beaver continued. "Most of them, if not all, are never heard from again. Repro's probably the _most_ powerful independent agency in the government. No other agency has oversight, or the power to challenge them. They pretty much rule themselves, and they dictate other agencies' actions and responses, to implement and enforce Repro's policies."

Jim took a breath. "Are Brown and Elgin sure we want to take the Department on? It could be political suicide, not to mention, Repro could prosecute us all for treason. And they'd probably win."

* * *

After the meeting broke up, Whitfield stayed behind to discuss Jared's case. Malik shared what background he knew on Jared and his involvement with the movement, the fact that his husband had been a ceiver, and their elder son was deeply involved and very active at one time, though Whitfield had lost touch and didn't know how involved Mac was these days. Morgan mentioned again that Gerry Padalecki's fundraising, personal contributions, and volunteer work with the Elgin-Brown campaign had earned him special consideration with the task force, and Morgan had the green light from Brown to bump Jared to the top of the search list. Morgan directed Whitfield and Beaver to focus their resources on finding Jared, while pursuing their general search for documents, facilities, and other detainees like Jared.

Over the course of the next few weeks, Gerry and Arthur Clark met with Whitfield and Beaver several times. With the time all of them were devoting toward a shared goal, a good working relationship began to emerge, forged from mutual respect and trust.

Operating on good faith and belief in the favorable outcome of the election, the agents and staff put all their efforts into designing systems, hiring staff, making initial contact with agencies and individuals who would be helpful once the task force was official. The goal was getting as much as possible in place now, to activate immediately once the election was won, so as not to lose time arguing both in public and in private sessions whether or not it should be done, or how it should be done, and who should be in charge of getting it done. The task force would be an officially named and funded agency, responding directly to the Vice President. Brown would provide power, influence, and the protection of his office. Jeff Morgan would head the task force, directing investigations and supervising staff. Whatever authority Brown, and thereby Morgan and the task force, might be challenged on would be conferred on him by Elgin. The Presidential nominee was in complete support of this crusade. The important thing, as far as Morgan and his force were concerned, was that they had solid backing and support, once Elgin took office – if he won the election.

* * *

 

Jensen made a quick trip to the US, carryon slung in the back of his parents' SUV as they drove from the airport to their house. He relayed news of JJ and Shannon and Seamus, asked about his siblings and their families, and any news of Jared's family. He spent some time with Jared's parents, and met all his and Jared's nieces and nephews, the "old" ones, and those born since he had been in Ireland.

Election fever was winding up to voting day, all the news was analyzing and predicting and setting disaster scenarios if the incumbents won, or if the challengers won. Jensen knew how his vote would go, and he had little time for debate. It took him a few days, but he finally managed to get a moment alone with his elder son.

"You've been avoiding me."

Mac wouldn't meet his eyes.

"Mackie, look at me." When the young man – young man! This was not the teenager Jensen had last seen – dragged his gaze up, Jensen saw the sorrow there. He reacted on instinct, and dragged the broad shoulders and chest up against his own, reeling Mac in the way he had always done since he was little. There were a couple of dry convulsive breaths, and then the dam broke.

"'S all my fault," Mac sobbed, his face tucked into his dad's neck, his voice muffled by tears and by fabric. "Pop never would have gotten into trouble if he hadn't been looking out for me. I'm responsible for – "

Jensen took advantage of the gasp for breath. "Mac, stop it."

He shook his son a little, and set him far enough away to seek his eyes. Reluctantly, Mac's gaze dragged up to meet Jensen's. "This is not your fault," he insisted, hands on Mac's shoulders to shake him a little bit. "Your pop is a grown man, and he has always made his own decisions. You are not to blame, you understand me?"

Mac shook his head. His gaze fell, and Jensen read the resistance in him. "Mac, there has never been a time when anybody talked your pop into doing something he hadn't thought through and decided, on his own, to do. I've known him a lot longer than you, and I know what I'm talking about." He pulled the youngster back in, wrapping an arm around those impressive shoulders. "Pop made his own decision, and he wouldn't want you blaming yourself." Mac hiccoughed, and wiped at his face with one hand. Jensen squeezed a little harder, and let Mac ease away a bit, standing on his own. He didn't drop his arm, though, and Mac didn't move to shrug it off. "So stop it," he scolded. "Don't make this about you."

That got a flash of green from startled eyes, and then a slow nod. "Okay," Mac agreed. "You're right. I'm sorry."

"No need to be sorry. Just – stop feeling guilty and concentrate on what's next."

Mac did ease off then, after giving his dad a quick hug of thanks.

"So what is next?" Jensen wanted to know.

"How about we go vote in some people who're ready to kick ass and take names?" Jared's son asked.

* * *

Elgin-Brown won, with a wider margin than reformers had expected. Brown wasted no time in formally launching and authorizing the task force, announcing the tasks they planned to accomplish, only some of them a smokescreen to cover the fact that they are finally, helped by quite a few newly-elected House and Senate members, along with other members who have only been waiting for a more permissive climate, getting to the job of dismantling the stranglehold Repro had on the country and the attitude of her citizens. That attitude, though, had significantly changed in part, due to the constant influx of positive messages the movement continued to stream online and promote in every public venue possible while they were underground. They were still underground, and would remain so, until the new federal and state administrations got the more punitive laws amended, or struck down entirely.

* * *

 

Shannon and JJ and Seamus welcomed Jensen home with open arms and happy smiles. He settled back into routine pretty seamlessly, equally glad to be back.

One morning after breakfast, JJ held Seamus in his arms and pointed at the large, framed photograph that sat on a shelf well out of the toddler's reach. "Where's Grandad, Shay?" he asked, and his son grinned and pointed to Jensen's smiling face. It was a color shot, taken on a sunny beach. Jared grinned right at the camera, one arm slung around Jensen's neck, while Jensen squinted up at Jared, wearing a matching smile.

"Gah!" Jensen trained the camera on the little boy as he bounced in his daddy's arms.

"And where's Grampa?" JJ asked. Seamus bounced some more and reached to point at Jared in the picture. "'Pah!"

Shannon's and JJ's voices joined Jensen's. "That's right, Shay! Good boy!"

JJ nuzzled the baby's neck, making snuffling noises, and Seamus shrieked with giggles and flailed his arms and legs. But JJ had him tight and didn't let him wiggle free. "Who loves you, little man?" He made gobbling sounds into his neck and Seamus shrieked again and walloped him one, right in the nose. "Who loves you, Shay?"

"Pah!" Seamus shouted, pointing at the picture. "Dah!" he laid his head against JJ's face, hard enough to thump against his injured nose.

"Who else, Shay?" his aunt prompted. "Who loves Seamus?"

The grin was wide, and displayed eight teeth. "Nonni!" he shouted, leaning toward her.

"Who loves Seamus?" Jensen asked, from behind the camera. The little boy looked straight into the lens, then lunged, arms out, hands grabbing. "Gah!"

Jensen did a quick handoff to Shannon of the camera and grabbed the baby, holding him in a gentle bearhug and growling. Seamus shrieked and giggled, wriggling away from the growling even as he snuggled deeper into the embrace. "That's right, Shay. Grampa and Grandad love you, too."

"Gah!" Seamus clutched at his shirt with both hands and smeared an open-mouthed kiss on his neck as he climbed his shoulder to lay his head down.

* * *

 

 **Comments?** [  
](http://fufaraw.livejournal.com/26563.html)

 


	3. More Than Ever | J2 AU NC-17 |

"Boss?" Beaver's voice was edged with…something. Excitement, discovery.

"What've you got, Jim?"

"Where's the nearest Marshals' office?"

Beaver’s tone got Morgan’s attention instantly. Now completely alert, Jeff pulled a file from his desktop divider and riffled through the folder till he found the applicable state. He checked the list.

"Ranson City, seems like," Morgan told him, flipping open the map. "Looks like…an hour from you?"

"Better get me two vans, and about a half-dozen deputies. I want to get this all cleaned out at once. I don't feel good about leaving it here overnight, now the facility's been breached, even with guards."

"You got something good for me, Jim?" Morgan's own anticipation was ramping up, even as he waved Randa over. He handed her the note he'd just scribbled and pointed at the number for the Ranson City Marshals' office. She nodded and moved to the next desk to make the call.

"I wouldn't be surprised," Beaver said. Morgan caught his note of caution, and didn't press any further. Some things didn't bear discussing over the phone. "Listen, we could just drive the vans straight back there. What do you think?"

"Nah, that's a convoy that's going to attract some attention, and it's a long drive. I think you're better off flying, even with getting the stuff in the vans, loading it onto the plane, and offloading it again when you land. Let me book you something, and I'll have transportation and guards waiting for you when you land."

"Okay, thanks boss."

"I'll call you with the time and place for your ride as soon as I know, okay?"

"Yeah. Let me go get started on some of this stuff. We're gonna need those marshals soon as possible."

"On their way," Morgan said, hanging up and reaching for the phone Randa was speaking into.

"Sullivan," she told him as she handed it over. "Captain."

Morgan nodded his thanks. "Captain Sullivan." He sat forward in his chair, upright, it helped with the authoritative official voice. "This is Jeff Morgan with Vice President Brown's staff, how are you this morning?"

"I'm fine, Mr. Morgan. What can I do for you?"

"Well, I have a field trip I'd like to send about half a dozen of your men on, plus two vans, if you can get hold of those for us."

 

Whitfield met the plane and helped get the boxes of materials into the two trucks Morgan had sent. Beaver handed him a folder as they climbed in for the ride back to the office, and Malik had his first look at what Jim had found. After turning a few pages and sifting through the first few photographs on top of the pile, he felt ill. His eyes met Beaver's. "It's all like this?"

Jim shook his head. "Not all, thank God, but enough. It isn't going to be fun sorting through it. And most of it is never, ever, going to be declassified. But we should get some info on the missing."

Whitfield met and held his gaze for a moment, both men sickened, but determined in spite of that – or maybe because of it. Whitfield shut the folder and put it safely away, turned to the window and concentrated on watching people going about their everyday lives as the trucks drove past.

 

* * *

Morgan and his team got down to sifting through the material confiscated from the abandoned Repro facility. They found photographs and video files, as well as copious notes and after-the-fact evaluations of Q&A sessions with detainees, with varied levels of applied physical incentives. There were detailed and speculative memos and correspondence about the use of psychological manipulation and physical stress – pressure, torque, submersion, asphyxiation, and more – to compel detainees to name fellow activists, divulge information about rally meeting points, and future plans of the underground. There were comparisons, success and failure rates, of various methods of applied stress. There were papers that listed types and severity of physical stressors, and recommended methods that could be combined for the most productive result. There were detailed observations on behavior modification of the long-term detainee by control of time perception, physical and psychological discomfort, startle reflex, allowing a sense of safety to develop by enforcing the monotony of daily routine, and then shocking the individual by applying pain or fear, or both.

Over decades, there had been a wealth of test subjects available to scientists and behaviorists in the Department's employ. The research results were prolific, detailed, and left the reader with a sense of creeping horror and the need for a long, hot shower. Or two.

The team met each morning to discuss their notes, cross-referencing any unusual or unique methods of torture and any notations of cross-study with other detention sites, searching for clues to other Repro facilities that might have been abandoned, and, though the thought wasn't actually given voice, the shared dread that there might be detainees left behind, locked up to die.

Preparing for worst-case scenarios as well as hopeful ones, Morgan's office released a formal memo to all law enforcement agencies, detailing protocol in the event any detainees were recovered from Repro facilities. Morgan's office was to be notified immediately, and recovered detainees were to be admitted to the nearest hospital, or clinic. Preliminary psychological observation and evaluation would be helpful, if the staff had time and expertise. Meanwhile, streamlined procedures were being established for the quickest possible transfer of recovered detainees to federal medical facilities. All records were to accompany the detainees to their destination; the original treatment center was prohibited from filing any copies. News and any identification of recovered detainees was classified, penalties would apply to anyone leaking information. Any patients capable of leaving a treatment center unescorted must be detained, either by a locked door or, if necessary, by physical restraints, until federal representatives arrived on site to take custody.

The memo did not contain the information that recovered detainees would be admitted to the most advanced military hospitals for physical and psychological evaluation and treatment, and of course, secrecy and security while they were debriefed. The length of their admittance had yet to be decided. Whether – and if so, when and how – to notify their families or next of kin of their release was another decision deferred. As was the one of whether or not, and at what point, to arrange reunions. These decisions were set aside until the task force had actually located and recovered individuals kept detained until now by the Department.

* * *

Seamus is running and talking, adding words to his vocabulary by the day. His second birthday is coming up pretty soon, and preparations for a party are underway. He has his family wrapped around his little finger – every one of them subject to the devastating dimples inherited from his dad and Grampa. JJ and Shannon are both doing well, working hard in school and spending time with friends. Jensen has time on his hands now, more than he's used to. He started a routine of running in the mornings once the kids are off to school and Seamus is in play group. It seems to be helping, keeping him grounded, and perking up his appetite a little. He's started writing again. Lyrics don't come as easily as they used to, but he keeps at it, determined to make it work.

Jensen often dreams of Jared, of laying him out in their bed and making long, tantalizing, passionate love to him, and of being fucked and cherished and left sated and happy in his husband's arms. The bed is cold and empty when he wakes, with tears on his face.

* * *

"Hey, Jared." Jensen had the audio recorder on as he clicked through an assortment of photos and vids, selecting the ones to add to this video letter for Jared. If he was honest, it was as much for him as for Jared. He needed a reminder of the good times.

"I was thinking last night – you remember that trip we took to Mexico? It wasn't long after we got married, the kids were still real little. We had both nannies back then, and my parents came and stayed while we were gone? They called it our 'honeymoon.' I guess it kinda was."

He dragged and dropped a couple more photos into the new file. "Ten days – well, eight, if you take a day off each end for flights and stuff. Eight days in that little hotel on the beach? Those little huts that opened right onto the water, remember? Look, there you are, all salty and sun-browned and gorgeous, you fucker. I had to keep covered up or buttered in sunscreen or I'd have burnt like a rotisserie chicken."

Jared stood facing the camera, the white sand beach and the intensely blue water behind him. His blue and white trunks hung precariously low from his hipbones, and he flashed a brilliant grin at the camera, at Jensen behind it. His eyes were hidden behind big black shades, and his hair was messy and windblown, curled from the salt water, streaked lighter here and there by days in the sun. Sweat visibly tracked down him, highlighting places where Jensen had licked it off him as soon as they got back inside.

"Come on, man, one more!" Jensen insisted, while Jared stalked toward him, purpose in every step.

"Enough!" Jared ordered, clamping a big, warm hand around Jensen's bicep and hauling him toward the dim, shadowed entry of their room, the glass of the entire wall folded back so there was little transition from inside to outside. Jensen's grip tightened on the camera, so as not to let it fall as he was hustled toward that shady harbor, Jared nipping and licking as they stumbled through the sand.

"Jared – Jared, wait – "

"No waiting," his husband growled, teeth tugging at an ear. Jensen struggled to keep his feet – somebody could lose an earlobe if either of them went down. Best defense is a good offense, right? He tipped his head and licked a wide stripe up Jared's throat, and the resultant, instant ripple of muscle and helpless groan enabled him to take charge of steering them. Entangled, they stumbled over the threshold and, when Jared would have headed straight for the giant bed in the middle of the room, Jensen aimed them toward the shower.

"Wanna blow you," he whisper-rasped against Jared's jaw and ear, and it was only will that kept Jared's knees from failing as he let himself be pushed. Jensen managed to drop the camera safely on the bureau as they staggered past. He pushed Jared against the shower wall and got the taps on, enough cold in the mix that it wouldn't scald them, and dropped to his knees as the rain showerhead poured over both of them. He undid the knot and stripped the blue trunks down, leaving Jared hobbled as they puddled around his ankles. Jensen wasn't above playing a little dirty, and anything that handicapped Jared's strength and size in Jensen's favor was to be exploited once in a while.

Jared squirmed when Jensen licked at the crown of his dick, but Jensen strong-armed him, pinning him against the wall with his left hand against his belly while his right cupped his balls and fondled them. He opened up and swallowed Jared down, relishing the piquant flavors of salt water and salt-sweat, and Jared, before it all washed away.

There weren't any pictures, but Jensen's mental memories were Technicolor, full five-senses-surround. He toggled off the recorder until he'd gotten his dick and his breathing under control, and then thumbed it on again so he could continue.

"Do you remember that trip, Jared? Because I sure do."

 

* * *

Adam Grainger and Joe Parker were released to federal custody on a Thursday without any prior notice. Just dropped off at the US Marshal's office in Denver with transfer of custody orders and no other explanation. The Marshals held the men without notifying anyone else, just called Morgan, who sent Whitfield to handle their debriefings. Both men looked a little gaunt, somewhat shell-shocked, but in fair physical condition. While Whitfield was en route, the local police had both men checked over by physicians at the closest ER. Transfer of custody went without a hitch, and Whitfield drafted one of the deputies as escort for the men on the trip back to DC.

* * *

Three weeks later, a group of three men was released, and Morgan was quickly notified, and called in Beaver and Whitfield to transport and debrief them. The elder of the group, Mike Peterson, was in rough shape. He had been in detention the longest, picked up more than five years ago, driving a handful of runaways northward to the next station on the underground railroad. Early in his detention he had been tortured for information: locations of meetings, the names and addresses of his fellow activists, people who supported the rallies and the underground. His injuries from repeated physical abuse had been left to heal untreated, leaving him with some physical impairments. The doctors took careful inventory, assessing range of motion and pain levels, and began a treatment plan of physical therapy and drug treatment, with an eye to possible surgery, to repair and recover as much function as possible.

The agents interviewed the other two men while Mike was still undergoing assessment, and learned a little more about the detention centers where they had each been held before transferring to the last one. James Ziglar estimated he had been in the last place for a year, while Eddie Manx estimated he'd only spent six months there. All the men were questioned about any other detainees they remembered. Their comments, descriptions, any names they could recall were taken down to be compared against lists of people who'd been actively involved, in whatever capacity, or outwardly sympathetic with the resistance movement, people who had gone missing with no explanation or trail to pursue. It was intensive, tedious, painstaking work, but Morgan hoped the results would be worth it. Ziglar and Peterson had been found and crossed off the 'missing' list. With the information the recovered detainees provided, maybe more would be found, more names crossed off those lists.

 

As soon as each of them had been given the medical all-clear, and been through initial debriefing, their families were notified. Grainger had no living family, but there were friends who were eager to see him, and help him reacclimate to life outside the bars. The rest of the men's families were overjoyed to learn they'd been released, and eager to be reunited. There were appointments for physical follow-ups. Peterson was in ongoing treatment, with regular physical therapy appointments, and Morgan felt the need to keep tabs on the others' physical condition, too. There were appointments for all of them with a psychologist, just for a few weeks or months, until the doctors could agree they were more or less mentally back to normal. But Morgan also decided to make a date every other week for these men to get together, on the theory that discussion and reminiscence could trigger memories of more facilities to investigate, and news of detainees to add to the search list. Besides, they had shared an experience that anyone who hadn't been there would find difficult to understand. Being able to talk about it with people who did, who'd been through the same thing, would give them a place to talk freely.

* * *

 

Jensen followed Jared's dad into the building, his mood somewhere between resentment and hopefulness. Gerry had insisted he catch a plane, come and meet with these people, some sort of search and recover committee. He convinced Jensen to hear what they had to say, hoping to give him a bit more hope and the knowledge that something was actually being done to find Jared, and get him back.

Mr. Clark was there ahead of them, and the three of them were ushered into a conference room to meet with some of the staff. Jensen shook hands with an older man, and then Whitfield introduced himself and had started to explain to Jensen how he first met Jared, when the man at the table stood and came to meet them. The attitude of respect the others showed toward him marked him as the leader, and Morgan introduced himself, and shook Jensen's hand. He turned to Gerry then, and began to speak to him directly, assuring him that Vice President Brown wanted everything possible done to recover the missing, Jared foremost among them.

While they were talking, Jensen noticed a folder full of photographs left open on the table. Drawn by his curiosity, he moved nearer and began to look through the pictures, which, once he realized what they were, sickened him. But he couldn't look away. The photographs were of men enduring various types of torture, and he quickly concluded that they were detainees. Jensen flipped through the folder, the horror that expanded inside him registering on his features with every new photograph he saw, imagining it was Jared in every horrific picture.

 

"Jesus," Whitfield muttered under his breath, and Morgan and Beaver looked up to see what he was talking about.

Ackles stood at the table where Morgan had been sitting, the folder he'd been looking through open; he was paging through the photographs, spreading them out on the table in all their graphic horror. His face was white, freckles standing stark against his pallor; his lips were thinned and pressed together as though keeping any sound locked inside him. His hands shook, but Whitfield and the others could see that he intended to look at every photo, and they all knew what, or rather who, he was looking for.

Morgan moved first, closing the folder and beginning to gather the photos scattered on the tabletop. "Mr. Ackles," he began to apologize for keeping him from seeing anymore, but the stark note in Jensen's voice cut him off.

"Oh god."

His fingers were cramped white and bloodless on the corner of an eight by ten inch black and white glossy photo. The subject was a large man with excellent musculature, outlined starkly from the tension his body was held in, bent forward and bound tightly by strands of rope coiled and knotted around his body. A uniformed figure was positioned behind him, performing some action hidden by the bound man's body. The man's head was pulled down by the rope around his neck, his features hidden from the camera. The rope had pulled tight, pressing deep grooves into his drenched skin. There was a garden hose uncoiled on the floor, and a puddle around the man's feet. Other objects were scattered in the background, and it would be helpful to have a team of analysts carefully examine the photo to identify those items, as well as to look for clues as to where the picture might have been taken.

Morgan reached for the photo and tugged; Ackles held onto it tightly. "Mr. Ackles," Morgan said again. "These photos are classified, and I'm sorry, but you're not authorized – "

"Jared." The choked whisper reverberated through the room. Padalecki moved quickly to Jensen's side to see what he had found, and he gasped at the sight, just before Morgan managed to wrest the picture from Ackles' grasp and tuck it back into the folder with the others.

"Is that my son?" Padalecki demanded of Morgan. He put a hand on Ackles' shoulder. The man was frozen and didn't respond. "Jensen? Was it him?"

Jensen shook his head. "I couldn't be sure," he told Jared's father. His head came up though, expression set like granite and eyes like heat-seeking missiles blazing straight at Morgan. "What are those?" he demanded. "Is that – are those pictures of _torture?_ Are those people being tortured?"

He turned to Arthur Clark. "I thought they were put in prison. In a penitentiary somewhere. They don't torture people in prison, do they? Don't – don't prisoners have rights?"

Mr. Clark hesitated, and Morgan spoke instead.

"This isn't prison, it's detention. There are no charges filed, and no record of who these people are, or where they're being held at any time. They have no opportunities to contact a lawyer, or next of kin, or the media. Nobody outside knows where they are – they often don't know themselves – or why they're being detained. But they can be, and often are, detained for an indefinite, unspecified period of time."

"Detention?"

Jensen's gaze locked on his, and Morgan continued. "Prison rules don't apply. In a lot of cases, there are no rules that apply."

Jensen's arms were wrapped tight about his body, and he swayed a little as he processed what Morgan had said.

"Just exactly what are we talking about, here?" Gerry Padalecki wanted to know. "Are we talking about torture? Lack of due process? Can they just keep these people locked up and torture them at will? Why? For what reasons?"

"For information," Beaver answered. "At least, at first. They hope they can get names and addresses, dates, plans, anything incriminating that can be used to arrest, or prosecute, or detain anybody who speaks or acts against the Department."

Jensen regarded the agent. "At first?"

"Well," Beaver's gaze fell. "Sometimes it's punishment, for acting against Repro. Or for fighting among themselves. Or maybe even going for a guard, attempting to escape." He stopped, but Ackles was still staring at him, daring him to go on. "Detainees have nothing to lose, so escape attempts..." he shrugged. "Like I said, there's no hope of a trial and a not-guilty verdict, or even a sentence that can be served, with an end date, and no hope of parole or release. There's no real hope that anything's ever going to change, so there's no reason for good behavior. So the guards sometimes use torture to keep detainees weak and confused."

Gerry wavered, and Clark helped him ease down into a chair. Ackles shut his eyes, his face completely blank. When he opened them he stared right at Morgan, whose mouth twisted ruefully. "You asked," was all he said.

"What are you doing to find him?" Jensen demanded, in a voice gone to a brittle rasp.

Morgan took a breath, and met Ackles' eyes. "Jim and Malik will go over what our procedures are, what we've accomplished so far, and what our ongoing mandate is. But basically, we dig. We talk to people, we investigate, we bribe when necessary, and we find out every possible thing we can, no matter how small or inconsequential. We follow every lead, and when one of them pans out, we raid and recover what we can. We have recovered several detainees; they're being debriefed before they're released and reunited with their families. Hopefully, they can give us information on centers where they were held that we hadn't known out about before now. We've also recovered files that our staff is combing for information about detention centers and file repositories scattered across the country, and we'll check out every one of them, as quickly as we can get to them."

He sighed, and ran a hand over his head. "But it takes time. I know how frustrating it is to have to keep waiting and hoping. But believe me, we're moving as fast as we can, and leaving no stone unturned."

Morgan turned to include Gerry. "I promise you, if he's out there, we'll find him."

He reached for Jensen's hand, and Jensen shook it, and Morgan shook Gerry's hand, too, before tucking the folder safely under an arm and leaving the room.

Once Morgan was gone, Whitfield turned to Jensen. "You know, Jared never did say what got him involved with the movement in the first place, though he did promise to tell me one day, when he could. I always guessed it was your experience with Repro. It was obvious how much he loves you, and I guess it just made him determined to change the way things are. I got the impression he wanted to make up, in a way, for what was done to you, and for his part in that."

* * *

The task force worked long hours, for days, hammering out procedures to manage reunions of released detainees and their families. There were options to be discussed and decided on. Would it be kindest and best to have the families meet the released men at the hospital as soon as possible? The detainees would need to be debriefed first, of course. Would the men prefer to recover somewhat before being reunited, or to just see their families again as quickly as possible? Once they were cleared, medically, they would need to be housed while they were debriefed, and while they wait for their families, where family members still exist. A gentler form of house arrest, with or without tracking anklets, was discussed, against the rights of the released detainees, and the degree of freedom they should have once they were debriefed. In the absence of a family, job, or place to go, a sort of halfway house was suggested, where detainees without other resources might gradually ease back into society. Ongoing medical treatment should be available, psychological aid, as well. Though Elgin wasn't talking about it yet, Morgan was aware that he intended to pardon these men.

* * *

 

Jensen arrives home in Ireland to find a visitor. While he was in the states, Rob Finlay, JJ's best friend from school, Robby, came to look for JJ, and it seems to Jensen like he's decided to stay for awhile. It's been a couple of years or so since he last saw Robby, when the bleachers collapsed at a rally and Robby helped Mac get Jared out. He's grown considerably since then, chest and arms filled out, and he stands nearly eye-to-eye with Jensen.

"I go by Rob, now," he grins, when Jensen shakes his hand. "But since you knew me when, I won't fuss if you forget and call me Robby."

JJ's taller than Rob, still growing into the height he got from Jared, but Robby's broader and stockier. His warm brown eyes light up every time they focus on JJ, and it's apparent that JJ returns his affection.

Rob slots into family life like he's always been there. He teases Shannon, worse than JJ does, frankly. But she evidently loves it and teases back remorselessly. Seamus loves him, sprawling over his lap like he owns it, and Robby gives every indication of loving the little guy just as much. Jensen wants to resent it a little, but the truth is, the addition of another person, another personality, to their little family group, is refreshing. Rob brings in some air and fresh perspective where they had gotten sad and insular and preoccupied, going about their daily routines, and being brave for each other. All of them seem a little brighter, happier; they laugh more, now that Rob's here. Even Jensen.

It's very late one night when Jensen can't sleep. He's tiptoeing downstairs for a drink when he hears rough whispers and smothered laughter coming from JJ's room. The guest room where he'd supposed Robby was sleeping is empty. Jensen says nothing, but he spends some time on the Internet the next day, and puts a stack of printouts in JJ's hands before dinner.

"You might want to read through those, and follow some of the advice," he says. JJ's gaze falls to the header on the top page, "Methods of Family Planning for Ceivers," and a blush heats his cheeks. "Share it with Robby, okay?"

JJ nods, and starts to make a quick exit, but Jensen drops a hand on his shoulder to pin him in place. "You let me know if you want to move Shay's crib into my room, all right?"

JJ's wide-eyed, startled expression makes it hard for Jensen to keep a straight face, but JJ nods, once, abruptly, and Jensen lifts his hand and lets him go.

* * *

 

About a month after Peterson, Ziglar and Manx, five more detainees were released. During their debriefing, two of them mentioned having been held in the same facility as Jared, George for a couple of weeks about a year and a half ago, and Ed in a different facility for nearly four months, less than a year before he'd been recovered.

Morgan wanted every bit of information any of the recovered men had about Jared. And to be honest, Whitfield did too. He and Jim sat with Ed one afternoon, in a debriefing that felt, in part, like a therapy session. A psychologist joined them, and made notes from time to time as Jim and Whitfield prompted, and Ed spoke.

"About two years ago," Ed said, "give or take, the center where I was being held got a bunch of detainees shipped in. One of them was Jaime. We talked now and then – not much else to do – and this one time he mentioned a guy who'd been picked up around the same time as him, name of Jared something, a big, tall guy. This group had all just been picked up, and the guy kind of impressed Jaime. He kept everybody calm, talked to them, got them talking to each other, kept their spirits up. He seemed like a good guy. But when that group was split up, they were sent to different facilities, and Jaime never saw this Jared guy again."

 

George had seen Jared just for a couple of weeks, about a year and a half ago. "We had some new detainees moved in. These guys had been in custody for a while, you could tell. They were all too thin, and none of them had much to say. They sort of kept their heads down, and watched everybody else out of the corner of their eyes."

George shifted in his chair and picked a pencil up off the table, flicking it from finger to finger absent-mindedly while he talked.

"There was one guy who stood out, though, just because he was so tall. Most of the time he sort of hunched down and tucked his arms and shoulders in, trying not to call attention to himself. I mean, he'd say hey if you did, but he didn't hold any long conversations with anybody." George shrugged. "But then, not a lot of us did." He leaned back in his chair, and from the look on his face, he was wishing he was anywhere else but in this room, talking about detention.

"Did you get a name?" Beaver prompted.

"Yeah. One of the guards, name of Roberts, took a shine to the tall guy right away. He singled him out for some 'special attention'." Memory was a long, deep rabbit hole, and George was staring down it. He shook his head, straightened his spine, and went on. "Called him Jared. Peddleggi? Something like that, we heard him call the guy often enough." George stopped speaking again, and the agents couldn't help but see the sudden glint of tears.

"George? Tell us about Roberts and Jared," Malik said. Even though his tone was soft, there was no doubt it was an order.

George sighed. "He'd take him out of his cell in the evening and bring him back just before dawn. The guy would barely be able to walk, and more times than not, he'd be bleeding through his shirt." George's face twisted. "Roberts would pat him on the back, or squeeze the back of his neck, or mess with his hair, like he was a pet dog who'd been a good boy. And then he'd say 'See you later' in this sweet tone of voice, like he was dropping off a date, or something."

Whitfield was struggling to keep still, but he had to ask. "How did Jared react to Roberts?"

George shrugged. "He didn't talk about it. He didn't really talk much at all after Roberts started paying attention to him. It seemed like he tried, sometimes.

"I remember one time a bunch of us were telling terrible jokes, one after another, taking turns, everybody trying to outdo everybody else's. The guards didn't seem to mind, as long as we weren't rowdy or anything. In fact, the couple that were there at the time were laughing, too. Jared was even smiling, and finally at the last joke, he busted out in a real laugh."

George was staring down his memory and not really seeing the room where he sat; his fingers tightened on the pencil he still held. "Then Roberts walked in, and said something sarcastic, chewed out the other guards for not keeping discipline. And then he turned to Jared. 'You think this is funny, boy?' He pulled his keys off his belt and unlocked Jared's cell. 'You come on out of there. You come with me, and I'll show you what's fun.'

"Jared held back, sort of backed up against the wall, and he was shaking his head 'no', but Roberts didn't go after him, he just said, 'You tellin' me no, boy? You tryin' to add to my fun? Lookin' for more punishment than usual?'

"You could have heard a pin drop in that cellblock. 'Maybe you want me to start pullin' some of these boys instead of you. What about little Davis, over there? He's new meat. I bet he'd fall in line real quick, what do you think?'

"Davis couldn't have been more than twenty, if that. Mousy brown hair, blue eyes, quiet and well brought-up. Just the thought of Roberts getting his hands on Davis was enough to make me sick. But Jared shook his head again. 'No,' he said. 'No. I'll be good. I'll come.' And he walked right out of his cell, Roberts grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and frog-marched him out of the block."

The pencil snapped in two. George blinked at the pieces, laid them carefully on the table, and blew out a ragged breath. "Jared wasn't in his cell the next morning. We never saw him again. Roberts never showed up again, either. We found out he'd been transferred."

 

When Ed saw Jared six or seven months ago, in the second-to-last center where he'd been held, he didn't know who he was until he heard one of the guards call him by name.

"He didn't look the way Jaime described him, man. I guess he'd have been tall, if he could have stood up. But they had a collar on his neck, and had it chained to a belt around his waist. The chains were too short for him to stand up all the way; it kept him hunched over. They had cuffs – manacles – on his wrists, and they were chained to the belt, too." Ed swallowed, reaching for the can of soda in front of him and chugging half of it. "The rest of us, we usually weren't chained unless we were being taken somewhere. But I never saw that poor bastard out of his chains." He shook his head, eyes down. "They worked him over all the time," he said. "Somebody had a bad grudge against that man."

* * *

There are other task forces and committees appointed by the new administration, working on dismantling long-entrenched departments and oversight committees, rewriting manuals and policy statements. The administration wants a thorough, sweeping reorganization of the way the Department of Reproduction functions and will function in the future. Personnel are quietly pensioned, or reassigned to other agencies or departments. Where those avenues aren't possible, there are outright firings of hardcore bureaucrats and true believers who persist in clinging to the harsh and rigid ways the Department operated in the past.

Research is quickly brought back on line and given the ongoing task of detecting fertile girls. But the Department's main priority from this point is a newly invigorated dedication to intensified research into the causes of infertility and the failure of live births.

Many new staff and personnel are hired, and some retained who are willing to adjust and support the Department's new agenda, and move forward with new goals in mind. Scientists and researchers are welcomed back into the Department's fold, and funding is funneled into their projects, even while it's siphoned from inflated salaries of executives, and payoffs to bureaucrats, whose primary focus has been the continued detection and training of ceiver boys, the facilities to house and train them, the luxurious office suites of those who oversaw the facilities, and the privileges and amenities always available to those who had supported the Department's main philosophy for the last several decades.

Some progress is being made on all fronts, but it's slower than most would like.

* * *

"There was this one guard, Roberts," Ed's voice was gravelly. It was clear he would rather not talk about this, but he had accepted that he needed to share what he knew.

"He had a real possessive streak when it came to Jared. He seldom let any of the other guards have anything to do with him. Whenever they needed to move Jared, it was Roberts with his hand on Jared's neck, the other hand on his taser. They had his ankles shackled, so he couldn't shuffle very fast. Roberts seemed to like pushing him so he'd stumble. Then he'd jerk him up by the collar and scold him for screwing up."

"Did Jared spend any time with the other detainees? Did you, or anybody else, get to talk to him?" Beaver wanted to know.

Ed shook his head, finger tapping on the soda can in front of him. "No, it was a square cellblock, with cells side by side along all four walls, doors in two of the corners. We were paired up in those cells; some of us had a cell to ourselves, with a cell on each side. We had bunks, and little sinks with running water, and flush toilets bolted to the wall. Minimal comfort. But there was this one cell, bars on all four sides, right in the middle of the square, with about eight feet of empty space between it and the other cells. They put Jared in that one by himself. He had a metal shelf to sleep on, and a bucket in one corner. And the light over his cell never went out."

He took a deep draught of the soda and set the can back down. "The guards didn't mind if we talked to each other, you know? Most of the time, if we were quiet. But we weren't allowed to speak to Jared. The guards would smack the bars of your cage with a stick if you did, and if you kept it up, they'd open up and smack you. Jared never tried to talk to us. I never heard him utter a word, the whole time he was there." Ed shifted in his chair, restless.

"Roberts would come get him, put a hand on his collar, walk him out. I'd hear him for a while after that, screaming." His eyes were focused on his shoes.

"How'd you know it was him," Beaver asked. "If you'd never heard him talk?"

Ed shrugged, flicked a glance up at him, and away again. "It was either him, or somebody from another cellblock. Always happened when Roberts took him out, though. The timing was sort of obvious."

Beaver nodded, and Ed went on. "We tried to give him what privacy we could, when Roberts brought him back. Sometimes it took a couple of them to drag him back to his cell. We looked away, didn't ask, didn't talk about it, didn't try to talk to him." A deep sigh welled up out of him, and there was a sparkle of tears on his cheek. "Was all we could do, poor bastard."

Malik struggled against his urge to throw up. "What happened to Jared, Ed?"

"Woke up one day, and his cell was empty," Ed took another long swallow of soda, sat a little straighter in the chair. "Nobody said if he'd been transferred, or what."

The last word fell with a little ring of finality, but Ed didn't elaborate on what the other possibilities for Jared might have been.

"Was Roberts harder on the rest of you after Jared was gone?" Beaver asked.

Ed finished off the soda and crushed the empty can in one hand. "Roberts was gone, too. Never saw either of them again."

* * *

 

 **Comments?** [  
](http://fufaraw.livejournal.com/26344.html)

 


	4. More Than Ever | J2 AU NC-17 |

In the weeks since the inauguration, there had been a flood of releases nationwide, groups of men in fives and sixes, and then in dozens, arriving by prison buses at penitentiary gates across the country, with transfer orders that turned out to be from nonexistent prisons.

"What in the hell is going on?" Whitfield wanted to know. A slow grin bloomed wide and bright across Morgan's face, and he shared it with every face at the conference table.

"They're running," he said. "Elgin's shutting off their funding. The money's drying up, they can't run their detention centers without it, so they're closing them down and clearing out the inmates."

A murmur of excitement rippled through the group. "Salaries are going to dry up next," Jim prophesied. "Those directors and administrators are going to be looking for work."

"If they don't start looking for rocks to hide under first," Morgan added, teeth and dimples on show. Randa blinked at him. Dimples, who knew?

"There's still work to do, people," Morgan reminded them. "There's another group of detainees at a federal prison in Utah. Jim, you want to send a team out there to debrief them?"

Beaver nodded, and made a note. "Why don't they just release the poor bastards?" he wondered. "They were never arrested, there's no need – and no point, really – in transferring them to prisons when they don't belong there. What's the rationale behind it?"

Malik spoke up. "What, just open the gates and say, 'Fly, be free!'?" Someone snickered. "These guys, they're used to being imprisoned. Maybe somebody has a little compassion. They know we're picking them up, so they're leaving it up to us to contact their families, help them adjust to being free?"

"I reckon we're lucky they're not just shooting them and leaving them out back in mass graves. No loose ends that way." Jim groused.

"But they can't do that," Morgan was quick to counter. "Because there would be loose ends. At least some of the remains could be identified, and then there would be even more shit for Repro to answer for."

Morgan's task force hired on and quickly trained additional personnel to handle the influx of released and recovered detainees.

A group of twenty-eight men arrived at an Arizona penitentiary and were housed, until their paperwork could be processed, in a section of general population cells, two to a cell, except for three of the men who were ill or injured enough to need immediate medical attention. One of them was sent back to his cell with instructions for the guard to return him to the infirmary every six hours for medication. Another was put in a bed and treated for an infected wound. The third was nonresponsive, emaciated, and covered with sores and scars. The doctor started an IV with antibiotics, and topical treatment of the open wounds.

The warden immediately contacted Morgan, who sent a team out. They got right to work taking down names and histories, and organizing evacuation to a military hospital for treatment and debriefing. There were only two agents, and there was a lot of information to be processed. It wasn't until Whitfield was taking one man's information and his cellmate returned from getting his afternoon meds that he learned there was still another man to process, in the infirmary. Once all the T's were crossed and the I's dotted, Malik checked in with his teammate, and went down to the infirmary.

The doctor couldn't tell Malik the man's name – he hadn't spoken since he was brought in, and none of the other men knew anything about him. He was unresponsive to sound, though he did flinch at pain stimulus. The doc walked Malik back to the otherwise empty ward, where the man was in the last bed, near the wall. Malik approached, noting the extensive bandaging, the extreme gauntness – so little flesh on what looked like a large frame. The man's head had been shaved, inexpertly, a few days ago; the stubble wasn't long enough to hide the nicks and scrapes of careless clippers. He was on his side, knees drawn up, arms tucked in tight, in fetal position. An expression of pain crossed his features and then was gone, but something about it.... Malik bent closer, angled to see the man's face better.

"Jared?"

There was no response, and Malik reached to touch his shoulder – nothing but bone under the thin cotton gown. "Jared, man, open your eyes. Jared, is that you?"

The only reaction was the pulling-in even further of the bone-thin arms and legs, and a fretful, barely audible moan as the man scraped his face against the sheet, turning away from outside stimuli as far as he could.

"Holy god, Jared. What the hell happened to you?"

 

They medivacked him out to the best hospital in the area. Whitfield stayed with him all the way. Beaver called Morgan to let him know, and then with Morgan's okay, started interviewing the men who'd been transferred in with him, to find out where they'd been held, and why Jared was in so much worse shape than any of the rest of them. None of the men were sure where the facility was, but the bus ride to the prison had only been about two hours. Beaver reported that, and Morgan got a crew busy surveying the area inside that two-hour limit.

No one remembered ever having seen Jared before the morning they were all loaded on the bus. He hadn't been kept in the same cellblock; he was a stranger to all of them.

 

Jared was unconscious, unresponsive to voices, but he did shrink from bright light, and he reacted to pain. The doctors chronicled and noted every injury he carried, treating, and beginning to rehabilitate, where they could. Using his authorization, with Morgan's blessing, Malik stayed in Jared's room, to document the injuries and the treatment for Jared's file. But also, to be a familiar face when Jared eventually woke.

Morgan called Gerry Padalecki himself to break the news. The man was overcome and incoherent with relief and emotion, almost past the point of speech. He asked Morgan to call Jensen, so he would know it was true and official.

 

Jensen got the call.

It was three years, four months, one week, and two days since Jared disappeared.

 

* * *

 

Jared's parents had already seen him, and were obviously shaken by his appearance, but also joyous at his return, and looking forward to him getting better. Malik and Beaver met Jensen outside Jared's room, and sat him down in a nurse's lounge nearby to warn him about what to expect, to try and ease the shock, a little. Jensen listened, trying to hear what they weren't saying outright, and nodded.

"Can I see him now?"

Jared was in a private room; the monitor sounds were soft and muted, steady and reassuring. Jensen looked into the emaciated face he hardly recognized, and was overcome by the reality of the breathing, physical presence of his husband, and with gratitude for those who had found him and brought him back. But a darker tide of hatred and rage flooded him, at the people who would do this – who _could_ do this to a man so gentle in nature, and sorrow nearly beyond bearing at all Jared had endured. He refused to surrender to the darker emotions, or to fear for the future and the road back to...whatever normal they could find together. Right now it was enough to gaze, and soak in the reality of Jared's presence, to listen to the machine report the regular beat of his heart, to lay a hand lightly against living skin, to bend and kiss his face, breathe, for a moment, the same air.

He found a chair by the window, well out of the way of staff who came to check and minister, but in direct line of sight should those eyes open. It happened that when they did open, Jensen was dozing.

"Jensen?" The soft question brought him awake in seconds, and he locked on the familiar hazel gaze. He was across the room without thinking.

"Jared."

An hour later, the nurse found them in each other's arms, Jared's face against Jensen's chest, Jensen wrapped around him, carefully avoiding monitor and IV lines. She let them sleep a little longer.

 

* * *

 

"Hey, Tommy," Beaver said, smiling at the nervous young man. In his early twenties, he looked even younger. "Why don't you have a seat here." He indicated a chair at the conference table, and Malik took the chair across from him. "Can I get you something to drink?"

There were water bottles on the table, and canned sodas, a stack of disposable cups, an ice bucket, and a coffee machine in the corner. When Tommy shook his head, Jim poured himself a cup of coffee and took a seat beside Whitfield, both of them facing young Tommy. The two-way glass was at their backs, of course, and the camera on the other side was recording Tom's interview.

"I understand you have some information for us," Jim prompted.

The warden of the prison where Jared and the others had been recovered had called Morgan's office yesterday. Tommy had appeared at the prison to ask the warden for a job. He had no references, but he did claim to have nearly two years' experience as a detention center guard. That facility had closed down. Everybody was fired without notice, and ordered to leave the premises an hour after the bus carrying the last of their detainees pulled out of the parking lot. The phones were disconnected, and when Tom drove out two days later to ask the center administrator in person for a reference, the place was locked down, abandoned.

Tommy wondered for the next couple of days what he should do. He knew where the detainees had been moved, and he got the idea of contacting the warden there, to ask for a job. Besides, he said, he wanted to know the men he'd been guarding had arrived safely, and were being taken care of.

 

"Why do you care about them?" Jim wanted to know, now.

"Well," the kid ducked his head shyly. "It's just, I'd worked around them for almost two years. I got to know them. They never gave me or any of the other guards any trouble, or anything. I don't know, I guess I was just concerned."

Malik spoke for the first time. "Did the other guards feel the same way?"

"Yeah, I guess." Tommy shrugged. "I don't really know. I haven't seen any of them since the place shut down," he said. "I think some of them maybe already moved on to someplace else. I only had cell phone numbers for a couple of the guys, and I got ‘out-of-service’ messages when I called." He looked from one agent to the other. "I didn't know any of them well, outside of work. We weren't friends, we didn't hang out."

Jim gave it a beat, looked down at the open folder in front of him and shuffled a few of the papers before he asked, "What can you tell us about Jared?"

"Who?"

"The detainee who was in such bad shape they had to hospitalize him," Malik prompted. He tried to remain neutral, make it safe for the man to talk. But the truth was, Jared's condition had left him seething.

Tom's eyebrows lifted in recognition. "Oh. Him. Yeah, how's he doing?"

"He's fine." Jim snapped, and then made the effort to soften his demeanor. "What can you tell us about him?"

Tom looked from one of them to the other, shaking his head. "I don't know, man. I'd never seen him before they loaded him on the bus."

They would check later, if they were able to locate any of the other guards from the facility, but Tommy had no reason they could discover to lie. The guards had heard a rumor, he told them, that there was one detainee in an old unused wing. A guard came and went at odd times, and didn't have anything much to do with the rest of them, or the detainees they guarded. Roberts was the guard's name, and nobody knew anything about him, either. Except –

The boy hesitated, and Malik pounced. "Except what?"

Jim put a hand on Whitfield's forearm and waited till he felt his intensity ease off a little before he turned to the young guard, his manner gentle, his expression easy and receptive. "Except what, Tommy? Even if you're not sure about it, any little thing might be of help to us."

Tommy chewed his lip for a moment before deciding. He took a deep breath. "Well, Mr. Phelan, the facility administrator, left two or three days before, for a seminar. But the thing was, he didn't come back when he was supposed to. So the next thing we knew, the District Chief was in his office, making arrangements to put the men on a bus and drive them somewhere else. He was giving orders left and right, and pushing the office staff to shred certain files, and pack others up for shipping and storage. Tempers were short, so when I had to run a report up to the office, I went in quick and put the report in his hand, and left.

"Only when I was leaving, this guard, Roberts, brushed by me like I wasn't even there, slammed the door behind him and started yelling at the Chief."

Tom's eyes were round at the memory. "I should have kept going, back to my station. But I was just so surprised, and I couldn't help overhearing – "

Jim grinned conspiratorially. "Yeah? What did you hear, son?"

Tommy reached for one of the water bottles, twisted off the cap and drained half the contents in one swallow. He replaced the cap, but continued to hold the bottle, picking at the label.

"It surprised me, he called the Chief by his first name. He said something like, 'Gene, this is bullshit! He's mine! You promised me if I helped you that this one would be mine – '

"And then the Chief yelled, 'Teddy, shut up and do what I tell you. Put him on the bus with the others. We're shutting this place down.'

'You can't do that!' Roberts yelled back. 'I did what you asked, and I expect you to keep your promises – '

'Teddy, I don't have a choice and neither do you. Get him on the bus. Now.'"

Tommy's voice took on a pleading tone as he reported what the guard had said. "'Gene, look, let me sneak him out. I can get him in my car and just drive away and nobody will know – '"

Beaver could feel Whitfield trembling in tightly controlled rage, and he was as pale as it was possible for a black man to be. Jim was nearly as angry, though he didn't know Jared personally, but neither agent could afford to let that anger show right now. Tom hesitated, looking from one face to the other, and faltered a bit. Jim dropped a heavy hand on Malik's arm, squeezing a little, and managed a smile. Reassured, Tom went on.

"The Chief said, 'Teddy, I knew when I brought you in on this that you were stupid as the dirt on your shoes.' And Roberts said, 'Gene, listen, they'll just think he died inside. I mean, detainees die all the time, right? Records get lost, bodies get buried, nobody knows who or when – he'll just be another missing, presumed dead detainee.'"

"There was a little scuffle inside the office, and I was about to take off, but then the Chief said, in this really calm voice, 'Get him on the bus, and then you get yourself out of the state. Tonight. I don't want to see you for a month. You got it?'

"I heard a crash, like something got pushed over, or thrown, maybe, and I did move then, down the stairs and across the corridor back toward the cellblock. I saw Roberts come bursting out of the office, though, moving fast in the opposite direction. He – he looked pissed. No, he looked – "

"What?" Whitfield prompted.

"Murderous." The word was barely above a whisper, and the effect that image still had on him showed plainly on his face.

Whitfield reached for a water bottle himself, opened it and drank most of it before he set it down. He seemed more in control than a few minutes ago. "What happened then?" he asked.

"We started loading the men onto the bus," Tom told them. "It went pretty easy. They wanted to know where they were going, but honestly, we didn't know, so we couldn't tell them. They were good about it, though, didn't give us any trouble. We had them all loaded, and Roberts brought out this guy none of us had ever seen." Tommy stopped, drained his water bottle and squeezed it flat in one hand.

"Man, I have never seen anything like that. Maybe in some of those old black and white newsreels about the POWs in the war. But this guy could barely walk. He leaned on Roberts; he was half-carrying him. He got him on the bus and took him to the back and into an empty seat. He shackled his ankles to the steel loop on the floor, chained the belt on his waist to the loops on the seat. He didn't cuff his hands, though. Then he bent real close and whispered something to the guy, and patted him on the head. Then he went charging off the bus. I saw when he went past me – he had tears in his eyes." The last sentence had a note of puzzlement in it.

"Roberts was gone by the time the bus pulled out," Tom went on. "Just went straight to his car and drove off. I was kind of expecting him to follow the bus, but he turned the other way."

"What happened after that?" Beaver asked.

"We went back inside. They called us into a meeting, told us our last check was in the mail, and to clean out our lockers, they were locking the place down.

"I went back two days later to ask for a job reference, and the place looked like nobody had been there for months. I didn't know what to do, but I remembered one of the other guards, when we were clearing our lockers, he mentioned he'd seen the bus driver's orders. They were moving the men to the penitentiary. So I thought I'd get in touch with the warden and see if they had any job openings."

He looked from one of them to the other. "And that's how I wound up here."

 

* * *

 

"He's been through a lot. They all have. I think – " Whitfield cut off the rest of what he had been going to say.

"What?" Jensen looked from Malik to Beaver. "What aren't you telling me?"

The older man sighed, and ran his hand over his bearded jaw. "We think Jared might have been singled out for some 'special treatment'."

Whitfield frowned, but Beaver shook his head, determined. "I think you ought to be prepared. He's not going to be the same man who disappeared three years ago."

Jensen held himself very still, trying not to betray how hard he was trembling on the inside. Jared. His Jared. What had they done? He nodded at the agents. "I understand."

Beaver slowly shook his head side to side. "I know you think you do," he said. "But I'm not sure any of us really understand what that man's been through."

Jared had been transferred by helicopter to a hospital in town to recover for a few more days, and now they were releasing him day after tomorrow.

"Where will you be taking him?" Whitfield wanted to know. "Where are you staying?"

"I've been staying with my folks," Jensen said, and both agents nodded. Of course they knew that. "And I'm sure the press knows that, knows their address. Jared's parents' address, too. "

Beaver leaned forward to speak frankly, almost conspiratorially, to Jensen. "Mr. Ackles, Jensen, I really think it's best if you and your husband do stay with family, where the public and the press know where you are, and we can protect you. We'll have our PR people make an appeal to the public that you be left alone to settle back into your life, as you can.

"But if everybody knows where you are, then anybody with malicious intent will find it harder to get to you."

"Malicious intent?" he asked, alarm evident in his voice. He hadn't considered this, at all. "Who would want to harm Jared? And why, after everything he's been through?"

"Well, most likely it would be members of the press trying to get an interview, a picture, even a quote, from either of you, or from the family, but especially from him," Beaver said.

Whitfield nodded. "But there are some people who were satisfied with the way Repro handled things, and they resent the recent changes. They might see Jared as a symbol of that change."

Jensen stared at him for a moment, before Beaver added, in a voice gentle with bad news. "They might consider you as a symbol of that change, too." Jensen's gaze went to him, and he nodded. "I'm not saying anything's going to happen – in fact, I don't think it will. I think it's just going to be reporters and video cameras and microphones and a lot of yelling and pushing and shoving to get the million-dollar shot for a magazine, or a quote."

"Either way," Whitfield said, "You're going to be better off in a house, with family around you both."

Jensen could see their reasoning, and he nodded, reluctantly. "For how long?"

"Just until you guys are ready to move out into some place of your own, I think," Beaver said. "A few weeks." "Things should settle down in a few weeks," Whitfield nodded. Both agents watched him, waiting for him to speak.

"Okay," he nodded again. "Okay, I can see your reasoning. That's what we'll do then. His parents have more room for us to stay there. I'll have to talk to them and get them to understand what he's going to need, to agree to back off a little, and give him some room, and some time."

 

* * *

Jensen sat behind the heavily blacked-out windows. He had seen Jared an hour ago, brought him clothes to wear, and gone over what was about to happen, twice, making Jared repeat everything once. Then he gave him a brief, hard hug. "Just like we talked about, right? Jim and Malik will be with you, every step, and I'll be waiting in the car." He searched Jared's eyes.

Jared looked a little apprehensive, which was not unexpected, but he nodded. "Yeah. Okay." Jensen nodded to the agents, kissed Jared quickly on the cheek and left.

Now the motor purred and the air conditioning hummed and streamed cool air from the vents, and Jensen watched large uniformed police officers make a cordon through the crowd as Whitfield and Beaver emerged from the building with Jensen's husband. The onlookers surged a little against the police line, but no one crossed it as the men made it to the car. Jensen tripped the handle and backed off swiftly as Jared tumbled into the seat and into Jensen's arms. Once Jared was inside, Whitfield shut the door and slapped the roof, and the driver pulled away from the curb, leaving Beaver and Whitfield to confront and placate the crowd, cameras clicking, microphones aimed, questions shouted, as Jared was carried safely away.

 

Jensen was overwhelmed by the scent of his husband – something he had ached for, missing all the time they'd been separated, and he was overcome now with the reality of it and gratitude at its return. There was only a lingering trace of eau de hospital, but it would soon dissipate.

Unsettled by the crowd, Jared burrowed into his arms, head down, face pushed into Jensen's neck. Jensen badly wanted to see him, to look into those hazel eyes, but he didn't want to turn loose long enough to let Jared get even that far away. Arms' length was too far.

The man in his arms was little more than bone and sinew; the clothes Jensen had brought swallowed and swaddled his body. Jensen closed his eyes, breathed deep to steady his voice and stroked firmly up and down Jared's back before trying to set him back enough so he could look Jared in the eyes.

"Take a look at you," he asked. But Jared clung tighter, and the soft stubble prickled at Jensen's skin where Jared's head was tucked into the curve of Jensen's neck and jaw. His hands tightened on Jensen's arms, in his shirt, like claws, and he pressed a body made of ribs and shoulder blades and collarbones and no flesh at all into the softer give of Jensen's body. "Nuh," he sobbed. "No please, please. Don't look, Jensen. So ugly. Don't look at me, please, please, don't."

Jensen wrapped his arms tight around the quaking bundle of bones and rocked him, pulling him in tight, so tight, so close. Nothing between them now. Not ever again.

"So beautiful, Jared. Always beautiful to me. You're here. You're here with me and that's good and we're beautiful. Always, always. Love you, man. My Jared."

 

The drive from the hospital to the Padalecki family home was about twenty minutes long. It took more praise and cajoling and encouragement, but Jared was able to sit up. He still ducked his head, and his eyes wouldn't meet Jensen's, but he wasn't hiding, though he looked like he wanted to, and might, at any sudden surprises.

"Jared, I know you're tired," Jensen stroked a hand up and down Jared's arm, hoping it was soothing. "But we're going to be at your mom and dad's soon. Remember what we talked about yesterday?" Jared blinked, and then gave him a tiny nod. "That's good. Now, we're going to go over it again, so you won't be startled, okay?"

Jared did flick a glance at his face then. He nodded jerkily, and spoke almost inaudibly. "Okay."

Jensen's hand tightened on his bicep, in lieu of the full-body hug he wanted to give. "Remember I said there'd be reporters, photographers, and video cameras out in front of the house?"

Jared jerked a little, and Jensen could feel the tension as Jared held himself still. Like a rabbit in a hunt, he thought, and would have done anything to spare Jared this moment of exposure. But he continued.

"There's a line of volunteers who are going to make sure none of those people get close to you, or close to the house. Do you understand?"

Jared jerked a nod, his lips sucked in and pressed tight together, his gaze on his shoes.

"Nobody is going to get close to you, nobody you don't know and don't want to see, I promise." Jensen went on. "But Jared, you're going to have to be brave, just for a minute, okay? You're a hero, and these people all feel like they helped to get you free. Most of them really did. All you have to do is just stand up for a minute, and smile and wave, that's all. And then we can go inside the house. I promise they won't get close." Jensen ducked his head trying to look at Jared's face. "Okay?"

Jared hesitated, but then he nodded again. "Yeah."

Jensen did hug him, then. He was being so brave, and Jensen could tell it was hard for him. His heart was breaking, but he couldn't give in to that right now. There were things that had to happen, and he had to keep Jared focused and get both of them through it. There were only minutes now, before they pulled up. Jensen continued to talk, trying to both distract Jared and encourage him.

"Your dad worked so hard to find you and get you out. We owe him so much. And your momma has missed you every day, wondering if she was ever going to get to see you again, hold you in her arms. So do you think you can stand up straight, and smile and say hi, and let them love on you, Jared? They've earned that. And Jeff and Megan, too. Can you can be strong just that much longer? And then you can go somewhere quiet if you need to, and take a nap or something."

"With you."

"With me, if you want me." The hands tightened on his clothes, so tight Jensen feared the fabric might rip. "So we're going to get through this together, right?"

Jared nodded, the short, soft hair on his head catching on the day-old stubble on Jensen's jaw.

Jensen hugged him tighter, shook him, just a little. "Jared, right? Tell me."

"T-together." The word came out in a rough whisper, but Jensen counted it anyway.

"Good man," he pushed Jared to sitting upright, straightening his clothes a little. "We just turned onto their street, and there's the house."

Jared's gaze swung in that direction; and he froze, wide-eyed.

"You got this, man?" Jensen wanted Jared's attention on him, and not on the crowd of reporters and spectators he could see thronged four or five deep on the curb at the edge of the Padaleckis' lawn. Voices were already shouting at them, at Jared, as they pulled into the driveway past the crowd. A line of volunteers, recruited and headed by Mac, kept the crowd from encroaching further onto the lawn. Jared nodded, but he was clearly out of his element. His hands clutched at Jensen, but Jensen moved away.

"Wait here for just a second." He stepped out of the car, closed the door and walked around to open Jared's door. "Come on now. We can do this."

Jared unfolded stiffly from the seat, then, one hand tight on Jensen's bicep, he stood straight, looked toward the crowd, and lifted the other hand to wave. Something like a smile crossed his features, and then Jensen and the driver were moving Jared toward the side door of the house. Once Jared and Jensen were safely inside, the driver smiled and nodded once, and left to drive the car away.

 

* * *

Megan stood at the door between the kitchen and the family room. "We're in here," she smiled through tears, and though she clearly wanted to run to Jared and hug him first, she ducked back to join the others.

Gerry and Shari stood waiting, Jared's mom already in tears, which she dashed away with the back of a hand as she came forward to wrap her arms around her boy. Jensen made to step away, but Jared's hand clung desperately tight to his, so he stood close by, smiling at Shari over Jared's shoulder.

"Welcome home, son," she smiled through the tears. "So good to see you."

Gerry came up to embrace Shari and Jared both. "Missed you, boy," Jared's dad said. Jared's head bobbed stiffly, and he stuttered out, "Missed you, too."

They were obviously reluctant to let go of him, now he was found, but Jeff and Megan each waited for their turn to welcome their brother home. And beyond them were Jensen's parents, and Shannon. "Papa," she uttered, her face buried against his chest, her arms tight around him. "Papa, welcome home!"

Jared turned loose of Jensen's hand to return her hug, his arms going tighter about her than they had for anyone. There was a lot of sniffling and smiling, and finally Shannon let go and stepped back. A movement at the door caught Jensen's attention, and then Jared's. "Mac," he breathed, and held out an arm. Mac didn't wait for a second invitation, crossing the room and wrapping his papa up in a bear hug that went on for several minutes. "I'm sorry," Mac muttered. "Pop, I'm so sorry. I should have – "

"Mackie," Jared cut him short. "There was nothing you could have done." His eyes met Jensen's over Mac's bent head. Jensen smiled ruefully. Forgiveness from his papa meant more than the talk he'd had with Mac months ago. Jensen was just glad to see Mac finally letting go of his guilt. "I'm just glad they didn't pick you up, too."

He set his oldest child at arms' length and really looked at him. "All grown up, Mac. You look good."

Mac let go reluctantly, but he met his pop's eye with a smile. "Thanks."

Jared reached for Jensen's hand again, and smiled at his assembled family, Jeff's wife and kids, Megan's husband, and Josh and Mackenzie. "It's really good to be home," he smiled. Then he turned to his mom, and managed to find the dimples. "Now." The grin was a little shaky, but it was there. "What've you got to eat?"

A general laugh rose, but died away pretty quickly, as everyone took in how gaunt he looked, and wondered how long it had been since he'd had regular meals. His mom broke that morose train of thought by bustling toward the dining room, shooing people before her and beckoning to Jared and Jensen. "Come on, everybody. Supper's on the table. Spaghetti and meatballs, enough for even the Padalecki army, and all the garlic breadsticks you can hold!"

Jared kept hold of Jensen's hand under the table, until he noticed Jensen trying to eat left-handed. He let go then, with a little smile, but it didn't linger long. Jensen could see he was attempting to follow the conversation, but with the kids chattering and the subject changing as often as the speaker, dinner conversation at the Padaleckis was often hard for Jensen to follow. Jared slowly seemed to shut down, the animation fading from his face, his eyes on his plate, his fork doing more rearranging of his food than ferrying it to his mouth. Jensen noticed Jared's eyes glazing over with inattention and saw him sway in his seat. He wiped his lips and put his napkin by his plate.

"This was wonderful," he smiled at Shari and at Gerry. "But somebody's tired. I think we're just going to go upstairs and turn in for the night." A few faces fell, but after glancing at Jared, everyone had to admit he looked tired and worn out.

"Come on, Jared," he stood by Jared's chair and took his hand. "Say goodnight. We're going up to bed."

Jared regarded him, puzzled, until he figured out what Jensen was saying. He shook his head. "But, it's early still."

"That's okay," Jensen told him. "I'm pretty sure everybody can take care of the dishes and stuff without us, right?" He glanced around the table and smiled at the nods and murmurs that of course they could. "You've had a long day." He put a hand under Jared's arm, lifting to lever him up out of the chair. "Come on, say good night."

Jared pushed his chair back from the table and stood, a little clumsy, unsteady on his feet. Jensen's hand on his bicep steadied him. "Thank you, Mama, for the wonderful food," Jared said. "And thank you, Dad, for helping get me home."

He took a step or two, then turned back. "And thank you, everybody, for not forgetting me. I remembered every one of you." He smiled a little smile that almost ignited his dimples, but then it faded, and he leaned a little on Jensen as they started toward the stairs. A quiet chorus of, "Good night, Jared! Welcome home!" followed them.

Jeff and Megan and their families went home, as did Donna and Alan, Mackenzie, and Josh and his family. Shannon had laid claim to the second guest room – Megan's old bedroom, Jensen and Jared were in Jared's old room – and Mac claimed the family room couch. After a little TV, which nobody watched, and a little conversation to wind down after such a momentous event, people wandered off to bed, sleeping more easily than they had done in a long time, with their prodigal son under the same roof.

Screams woke them, not long after midnight, sharp, urgent, agonized. They went on for several minutes while Gerry and Shari pulled on their robes and Shannon and Mac stood irresolute outside their parents' bedroom, unsure whether to rush inside, or not. Shari sent them both back to bed. "I'll call you if you're needed," she promised them. Gerry stood by as she put a hand on the door and leaned her forehead against the wood. The screams had stopped, or rather had subsided into great gulping sobs from her middle child that twisted at her heart and urged her past the barrier that kept her from him. But threaded through the sobs was a low, reassuring voice, a quiet murmur of words, steady as any rock, a rise and fall of comforting sound. As she listened, the sobs grew softer, easier, farther apart. And a second voice joined the first, and it became an exchange, first one spoke, and then the other, and the voices grew even more quiet.

She turned away then, going into her husband's arms before pushing him back toward their room. "Jensen's got him," she whispered. "I think they're going to be all right."

 

* * *

 

Morgan closed the file. Jared was in the last group of detainees to be found and released. All the recovered records the task force pored over confirmed that anyone who hadn't been found and reclaimed by now had died while in custody. And while there was still investigation into where such bodies might lie, might be reclaimed for proper burial and closure for those families, Morgan had a little regret even while he accepted there was not the same urgency as when lives were at stake.

Elgin pardoned all the detainees by Presidential fiat; there was no discussion or entertaining objection from Congress or the court. Arguments and posturing were still ongoing as to the authority and power Repro had, and would have, in the future. But this wrong, at least, was redressed, and rehabilitation and reparations were already begun.

 

 

* * *

 

 **Comments?** [  
](http://fufaraw.livejournal.com/26107.html)

 


	5. More Than Ever | J2 AU NC-17 |

Jensen found them a house to rent. It was only temporary, until they both decided what they wanted, long-term. But it had a pool, and one wall of the family room was glass overlooking the pool, with sliders onto the concrete patio and pool surround. There was no back yard to speak of, but there was a privacy fence, and the surrounding houses had no windows that could see into the pool area.

An older one-story brick rambler, remodeled with a smallish open plan kitchen, dining, and living room, it had two bedrooms, and two baths. Jensen bought a weight bench, a rack of weights, a treadmill, and a stationary bike and had them installed in the family room. On further thought, he had the load bearing capacity of the rafters checked, and when he got the okay, the heavy bag was installed.

He bought a California king for the larger bedroom, a couple of comfy sofas and had a flatscreen TV wall-mounted in the living room. He had a search on ebay and in local game shops for the vintage games Jared used to like – Jensen hoped he would still enjoy them. He stocked up on some new stuff, too, but tried to stay with fantasy and puzzle-solving, rather than balls-out wargames. He was on unsteady ground, here, and willing to wait to find out where Jared's interest could be engaged, and where to avoid the emotional minefields lying in ambush.

Jared had a couple of sessions with Malik and Beaver. He had been in such bad shape at first, that Morgan had delayed his debriefing. But as he got stronger, they asked him to come in and tell them what he could about his time in detention: where he'd been held, any personnel he could identify, any other detainees he'd met or been held with, anything he'd overheard that might be useful. He tried his best to remember, and to answer what they asked him. The sessions were necessarily short; he was too weak to be subjected to those memories for long. He didn't know if he'd been helpful or not, but he hoped so. Reliving any portion of that time wasn't something he wanted.

Jared also had appointments scheduled at the military hospital with doctors every two weeks at first, to make sure he was improving, physically, for some easy physical therapy, and to take care of any problems that might become apparent from the lack of care he'd had during his detention. After the first month, he was improving so steadily, regaining appetite, weight, and muscle tone, that they spaced the appointments six weeks apart. If Jared continued to regain ground at a steady rate, they would be wider still, months apart, instead of weeks.

He also had twice-a-week appointments with a psychiatrist affiliated with the hospital, just a half-hour check-in to discuss any problems as they came up. After the first few appointments with Jared alone, the doctor recommended that he and Jensen find a private therapist to work with them both, individually, and in combined sessions. He gave them a list of local psychiatrists, psychologists, and counselors who had particular experience working with PTSD patients and their family members. Lacking any other real criteria, Jensen suggested a woman psychiatrist, and Jared agreed. They booked their first joint session.

Jensen had observed Jared's lack of ease around men – even with family members he wasn't as relaxed with his dad and Mac as he was with his mom, and with Shannon. He and Jensen didn't go out much, but even walking to and from the car for appointments, or on occasional trips to the store, Jared would tense up if another man or group of men passed. He was noticeably more relaxed if the strangers were women. So Jensen hoped Jared would feel a little more at ease with a female therapist.

 

Getting them moved into the house was a major step, Jensen hoped for both of them. Jared still flinched when anybody touched him unexpectedly – even sometimes when he saw it coming. He was embarrassed about it, even when his family said not to be, that they understood. Jensen gently bullied him into the pool, in a t-shirt over his trunks because Jared was still painfully self-conscious about his body. The first time the water closed over his head, Jared panicked, choking, flailing, and fighting the water. Dodging as well as he could, Jensen got him to the side, clamped his hands on the curbing, and talked him through the flashbacks: being strapped on his back to a board, head down, with water running into his face, his nose, his mouth, unable to catch a breath. His hands tied behind his back and being held face down by two men, sometimes three, with his head underwater, unable to fight his way free.

Jensen floated just out of reach, waiting till Jared had choked out his memories.

"Jared. Jared, look at me."

It took a moment, but finally, Jared's gaze came up and he recognized where he was, and who he was with. "I'm not touching you. You're completely free to move however you want to. You can even get out of the pool."

Jared nodded, and Jensen saw his arms tense, preparing to haul his body up and out.

"Just wait one minute, okay?" Jensen asked calmly, pleased when he saw Jared's muscles relax. "Look at your hands, Jared."

Jared glanced at his fingers where they were clamped on the rim of the pool.

"Your hands are free," Jensen reassured him. "You can put them anywhere, you can move and go any way you want. Okay?"

It took a moment, but Jared nodded, and Jensen continued. "Does the water feel good, when you're not being held under?"

He had to think about it, but eventually he nodded. "Then stay in for a while. Tell you what, I'll leave it to you. I'll just sit over here," he pointed to the loungers a few feet away. "Nobody else is here. No one is going to come and touch you while you're in the pool, right? And if anyone does, I'll be here to stop them." He grinned, making it a joke, and after a second or two, an answering grin flickered on Jared's face. "So you can just enjoy being in the water, and the sun, okay?"

It got better after that; Jared was able to get into the pool without fear. The day he cannonballed and surfaced grinning, after having drenched Jensen poolside, was a red-letter day in Jensen's book. The sun and the water relaxed him; muscles working against the pressure while buoyed at the same time was a gentle but effective workout. And his skin, always beloved by the sun, took on an increasingly healthy color.

Jensen tried out new, as well as old favorite recipes to tempt Jared's appetite, and after a few weeks, his stomach began to adjust to a wider variety and greater amounts of food again. It was a joy to see Jared roll his eyes in appreciation and savor his food; having him reach for seconds was a cause for celebration.

 

* * *

Jared was bent forward, toweling his hair with his back toward the door when Jensen walked into the bedroom. Streamers of steam still eddied from the bathroom door and the mirror was fogged. Under the big hands and folds of towel, Jared's hair was long enough now to curl when damp, and Jensen's eyes tracked lower, assessing the increasing mass of his body since he was eating better, and had begun working out –

Jensen's thoughts came to an abrupt halt as he got his first look at Jared's naked back. He understood instantly why Jared had never gone without at least a t-shirt where anyone might see. Thick welted scars and finer marks crisscrossed his back, running horizontally, diagonally, puckering and wrinkling the skin between them. There were starburst-shaped scars that looked like burns, and areas where lines crossed and re-crossed each other to form knots where scar tissue had opened and rehealed several times. Jensen couldn't help but gasp as he moved forward, his hand out.

"Jensen!" Jared scrabbled for the t-shirt on the bed, struggling to get it on quickly, not meeting Jensen's eyes.

Jensen put his hands on Jared's forearms, trying to get him to be still, to wait. "Jared," he insisted, quietly. "Let me see."

Jared shook his head as he backed further into the narrow space between the bed and the bedroom wall, until he bumped into the nightstand and had to stop, his head still shaking no.

"It's okay, man," Jensen tried to soothe him. "I just need to know, okay? I know it was bad, what they did. But I imagined…. Man, I don't know if what I thought was worse than the reality, but Jared, I need to know. Let me see."

He sat down on the edge of the bed, patting the mattress beside him. "Come sit."

Jared's eyes were squeezed shut, the t-shirt clenched tight in both his hands, the knuckles white and the fabric stretched so thin Jensen thought it might tear. He put a gentle hand on Jared's wrist, and even that contact made Jared flinch, though Jensen could see how hard he fought to control it.

"Jared, it's all right. Come sit, and let me look at your back."

Jared gave a shudder and moved, easing down onto the mattress, turning his face toward the wall. It took a lot of bravery, Jensen acknowledged, for Jared to trust enough to give his back to Jensen. And with reason.

It was a moonscape, a map of sadism and torture. Tears of sorrow and sympathy, of great anger and futility sprang to Jensen's eyes, and he didn't try to conceal them. He raised a tentative hand, and then, giving Jared the authority and control he'd been so often and so long denied, he asked permission.

"Can I touch?"

One single, jerky nod, and Jensen could see him vibrating with the tension of holding still, of exposing this part of himself to another person. Jensen's fingers ghosted over welts and crisscrossed lines of scarring, mountain ranges of thick, shiny pink lumps, of thin lines paralleled over and over: cuts, he supposed. Jared's skin twitched and shivered, flinching from even so gentle a touch. Jensen's fingertips traced a cratered star on one shoulder.

"What did this?"

Jared swallowed, found his voice. "Taser. Cattle prod. Something electric." He shuddered again, and Jensen put both hands on his shoulders, laid his cheek against that expanse of marked and ruined skin.

"I'm so sorry. I am so sorry that anyone could do this to you. I hate them for it."

"Ugly," Jared choked out on a sob. "They said. Too ugly for anybody to love again."

"Well they were stupid."

Jared held his breath, and Jensen used his hands to turn Jared to face him. Both hands on either side of Jared's face, he ducked down to catch his husband's gaze. "Jared, look at me."

When he did, Jensen managed a smile through the tears that were still falling. "You are beautiful, inside and out. I don't care what they did to you, that never changed."

"You don't know – "

"No, not all of it. But you'll tell me. And it won't make any difference."

Jared shuddered again, and his own eyes welled with tears. "It will, it will. So ugly, so bad, Jensen – " The rest of his words dissolved in sobs, and Jensen threw the notion of space he'd given Jared so far to the winds and pulled him tight into his arms and against his body, Jared's face tucked into the curve of his neck, Jensen's hands clasped tight on the naked skin of Jared's back.

"I will always love you," he said, loud enough to be heard over the sobs, his lips in Jared's hair. "You will always be the most beautiful person in the world to me."

Jared shook his head again, tears soaking into Jensen's collar.

"You are. And before we're done, I'm going to make you believe it."

 

* * *

Jared picked up light weights at first, and started slow on the treadmill. Within a couple of weeks he said he was ready for a gentle jog around the neighborhood. They went in the early morning, when nobody but other runners and walkers were up and out yet. It was quiet, and familiar from his old life, and he settled into it, picking up both speed and distance as Jensen paced him, side by side.

The first morning they met a dog walker, Jensen was quick to recognize Jared's tension. As the seven leashed dogs of various sizes and breeds approached them, Jared's steps stuttered, and then increased speed. His shoulders went higher, his fists clenched tight in front of his chest. The dogs sensed it, of course, and one of the tiny ones and a couple of the larger ones lunged and barked. Their walker pulled back on their leads, and Jared flinched and ducked so hard he was off the sidewalk and into the street, facing the dogs.

The walker apologized profusely, and pulled the dogs onward. Jensen reassured the woman, and stepped down off the curb to throw an arm around Jared's shoulders. "Come on, man."

Jared was shaking, and once the dogs moved away, Jensen could feel him trying to relax. "Sorry," he whispered. "Sorry sorry sorry."

"Jared, nothing to be sorry for. You want to finish the run? Think you'll feel better if you pound some of this tension out?" He rubbed at Jared's tight shoulders until Jared gave a nod, and straightened. They ran on, and after a few minutes, he settled into stride and ran straight and steady until they finished their run in their own driveway.

Jensen pulled a couple of water bottles from the unrefrigerated stash as they passed through the garage, waiting till they'd both had a drink and sat on pool loungers in the back yard to cool off. He watched until Jared's breathing slowed, before capping his bottle to set it down.

"They used dogs in detention, huh?"

Jared's glance flickered to his and away again. He nodded.

"You ever get bitten?"

He shook his head. "No. They brought them in just for intimidation, I guess. To keep us scared and under control." Jensen waited, and after a minute and another sip or two of water, Jared shrugged. "It worked. They were big dogs – Malanois mostly, a few Rots or Dobies occasionally. German Shepherds. It varied from place to place." His eyes flashed up to meet Jensen's. "It'll get better. It just surprised me."

It was Jensen's turn to shrug. "I know it will." He jumped up and shoved Jared's shoulder, harder than he would have done a week ago, before taking a few running strides toward the pool. He hit the surface with a huge splash, and surfaced grinning to see Jared surprised and dripping. He palmed water as hard as he could, sending a wave of cold wet Jared's way, at least half the water reaching its target. Drenched, Jared sat open-mouthed and blinking for a few seconds, before, as Jensen had hoped, he surged to his feet and stormed toward the pool with a grin on his face.

 

The moments of fun were not enough to keep the nightmares away. If anything, they were worse that night. Jensen just waited till Jared was aware enough not to fight him, then wrapped him up in his arms while he came back from whatever hell he'd been dreaming of.

 

Jensen set up the spare bedroom as a guestroom-office, and put a desk in there for his laptop. He showed Jared the video and photo files he'd made for him while he was away, and told him to take his time going through them all.

He set up Skype, and he and Jared were able to talk live to JJ and Rob. Jared and Seamus met for the first time via the vid link, and Seamus recognized his Grampa from the photographs he'd grown up with, and they heard each other's voices for the first time. Jared wasn't able to stay on long, and said his hasty goodbyes. Jensen finished out that first call, and went to hold Jared while he shook and cried, overwhelmed with emotion.

Jensen wandered by the office now and then, when Jared wasn't in the pool or the weight room, and was pleased to see him grinning at what he was watching, even sometimes while tears rolled down his cheeks, his fingertips, as often as not, touching the screen.

 

There was no sex. And as Jared continued to improve, as his color returned and he packed more meat and muscle onto his emaciated frame, as the contours of his face became more familiar and recognizable, it was becoming more difficult for Jensen to restrict his touch. To provide support and encouragement, and gentle affection, and to stop there. The first overture had to come from Jared, the first indication that he would welcome, that he would be able to welcome, touch of a sexual nature. Jensen had no idea when that would happen, or if Jared would ever be capable of that.

He brought it up with Dr. Tilley, the psychiatrist Jared was seeing once a week, now. Jensen booked an hour with her every couple of weeks, just to check that he was making the right decisions, moving in the right direction, and pushing not too hard, but hard enough, to help in Jared's recovery. For the most part, Dr. Tilley praised his instincts, but he needed some support in making his choices – and lately, in standing by them.

"I want him back." The session had suddenly turned very emotional, and it was hard for Jensen to get the words out. "He's right here, and I miss him so damned much." Dr. Tilley's expression was compassionate, without being overly sympathetic. "Do you think I'll ever get him back, Doc?"

"Do you, Jensen? Do you think you'll get him back?"

He thought for a moment before he shook his head. "Not the way he was," he admitted sadly. "It would be stupid to think, after all that's happened to him, that he wouldn't be changed." He drew a deep, steadying breath. "But I hope, that after he's had some time to heal, that my Jared, the one I love, the one I miss, the one...I need, that that Jared is still in there, and he'll be who's left, after all this."

She smiled. "I hope so, too."

"What can I do to help make that happen?"

"Jensen, I think you're pretty much doing everything right. You know that whatever you do, the majority of the work is Jared's. And you can't help with that, he has to do it himself. I just want to make sure that you're taking care of yourself, while you're taking care of him."

 

* * *

Shannon's school was less than two hours away; she managed to come for a weekend visit every month or so. Mac was in town, but he had a job, and school, and he was still involved with the resistance, now pursuing some of the new opportunities for change. He came for dinner or a gamers' evening once in a while, but he had his own life, and that was fine. Once in a while, though, both their kids managed to be under their roof at the same time. That was fun, as well as nostalgic. For Jensen. For Jared, it seemed almost an ordeal. He hugged his kids, and sat at the table and let Jensen ask them questions. He excused himself early, leaving Jensen and the kids to carry on by themselves. When Jensen came to bed, Jared was already asleep – or pretending to be.

 

The nightmares didn't ease off. They were just as violent, just as frequent, sometimes two or three in a night. They weren't always the same thing, as far as Jensen could tell. But Jared always woke screaming. Dr. Tilley prescribed sleep aids, and they seemed to help, a little. Jensen supposed they'd have to totally knock Jared out to completely stop the nightmares.

 

* * *

_It had been a good birth. After a rudely healthy and uncomplicated pregnancy, when JJ had said he wanted to deliver at home, the obstetrician had agreed. The hospital where she had admitting privileges was mere minutes away, and Dr. Haney herself had come to the house, with Col to do any necessary heavy lifting. The nurse had a gentle way about him, a calming presence and an easy humor, and JJ felt comfortable and familiar with him from office visits._

_Their family doctor had referred them to Moira Haney early in JJ's pregnancy, and the relationship had become a good one. So when JJ went into labor, it only took a call before Col showed up a few minutes later, getting JJ up and walking, timing contractions, and keeping Dr. Haney informed until time for things to get serious. She was on their doorstep a few minutes later, and things progressed rapidly from there. All the excitement over for now, Dr. Haney had gone home, leaving her patients under Col's watchful gaze._

_Jared smiled as he got the tea together, pouring mugs for Col and Jensen. Col was sitting with JJ, who was sleeping now. He smiled reassurance as Jared set the mug down next to the chair where Col sprawled. "Boy's doin' fine," he said, pointing with his chin toward the bed. "He should sleep for hours."_

_Jared nodded, bending to brush the hair back from his youngest's forehead and drop a kiss on the smooth skin. "You let us know if you need a break," Jared told the nurse, as he slipped out of the room, leaving the door open a crack._

_Jensen was in the armchair by the fire, holding the baby in his two hands and peering into the tiny face, crumpled momentarily in a wrinkled frown. Jared's husband drank in the smallest detail: the flicker of fingers, the flutter of eyelids. His expression was one of wonder. Jared knew how that felt – being almost afraid to look away and miss the miracle of another revelation of movement._

_The baby squirmed and stretched, flinging out his arms before drawing his legs in, toes curled, and pulling both his arms toward his mouth. He yawned, and his whole face seemed to disappear for an instant, before everything smoothed out again and he relaxed in Jensen's hold._

_Jared bent to plant a kiss on top of Jensen's head, and to stroke the baby's cheek with the back of a gentle finger. "Pretty awesome, huh?"_

_The face Jensen raised to him was washed in love and awe, and a tinge of regret. Jared put a fingertip on Jensen's lips, then slipped that hand around his nape, warm and familiar. "Don't, Jensen," he admonished, Jensen's feelings clear. "What's done is in the past. Let it go."_

_Jensen held what he had been going to say unspoken for half a moment, then let out a little gust of a sigh and a nod._

_He had never held their babies like this. Jared had hated and regretted that at the time, but he wouldn’t force it on him. And now, Jared could see Jensen's regret. But he meant what he'd told him: they couldn't change the past. But they could revel in the present._

_"Can I hold him?"_

– The scrape and clang of metal on metal brought him instantly to full wakefulness, but he held himself still, listening intently. Not the door of his cell, then, nor the door to the corridor outside his cell. He concentrated on taking slow, shallow breaths – inhale, exhale, smooth and easy – to calm his jackrabbiting heart. The last time he'd taken a deep breath it had hurt his ribs so badly he'd truly wished, for a moment, to die. The regular breathing was working, though, his heart was calming.

He curled his long, rawboned frame into a ball to conserve heat against the damp chill, and willed himself to sleep. Maybe the dream would come again. Or maybe another one, beautiful and bright, of the ordinary life he once had lived.

Jared woke to feel the warmth of another body at his back. Fear overwhelmed him; he couldn't stand someone being that close behind him in the dark. He couldn't make himself believe that he'd come home, couldn't accept that Jensen would want him back, could think he was worth being loved. He crept out of bed, and barefoot, in his pajamas, went to find some cold, dark, hard place to curl up in, some familiar reality to anchor him.

 

* * *

Jensen woke at first light, to an empty bed. He listened for a few minutes, thinking Jared had gotten up to use the bathroom, but there were no sounds of water running. Worried, he got up, wondering where Jared had gone. More worried by the second, he searched the house, calling quietly for Jared. He wanted to scream, to make Jared answer, but somehow at the same time he was afraid to startle him. Twenty minutes later Jensen found him curled into a tiny niche beside the tool bench in the garage, on the cold concrete floor, his eyes tight shut. Jensen knelt down in front of him, and though he wanted to gather him up and hold him close, he held himself back, and spoke gently, "Jared?"

Jared's body tensed, his eyes squeezed tighter shut. He shook his head "No...no!" came out in a raspy whisper.

"Jared, open your eyes. It's Jensen."

He moaned, but he didn't respond otherwise.

Jensen reached out to touch, but drew back at the last minute. "Jared. Open your eyes, man. Let me know you're awake and with me. Come on, look at me."

Slowly, Jared's eyes blinked open, even as he drew his body in a little tighter. They focused on the man in front of them, and he blinked again and whispered, "Jensen?"

"Yeah man, it's me. Can you stand? Here, lean on me, and come on out of there."

He got them inside, got Jared on the couch, wrapped up in a throw, and started a pot of coffee, bringing two mugs, Jared's fixed the way he liked it. He wrapped Jared's hands around the mug and urged a good couple of swallows down him, before sitting on the coffee table in front of him with his own mug and gently, kindly, demanding to be told, "What the hell, Jared?"

Jared met his eyes, but his gaze couldn't hold when he started to talk, and grateful that he was, at last, talking, Jensen just listened.

"I tried. I tried so hard to be strong, no matter what they did, what they said. I knew they were lying to me, but after a while it started to sound like maybe some of it could be true."

Jared's gaze flickered on Jensen and away again. "They kept me in a room with no windows, and there would be bright lights on for days. And then the room would be completely dark, and I was alone, and I couldn't hear a sound. I would have done anything to hear a human voice. I would have done anything.

"But I didn't tell them what they wanted to know. Even after days of finally falling asleep under those bright lights, and being wakened by loud, loud music, and all the things…

"They hurt me, Jensen." The mug wobbled and slipped, and Jensen took it from him, set it aside as Jared went on. "They hurt me so bad. So many times. And I couldn't. I tried, I tried so hard to be strong, but I couldn't.

"I talked. I talked, god help me, I told them what they wanted to know. I told them anything they asked – I volunteered stuff they didn't even ask for. Once I started, I couldn't stop, but they kept hurting me, over and over, time after time, until I guess I couldn't tell them anything new."

It was all Jensen could do to keep silent and still, to keep from gathering Jared up and rocking him, to not yell and rage at people who could deliberately hurt his strong, sweet, wonderful husband. But he did it. Tears slid down his face, matching those that tracked Jared's cheeks, but Jensen held himself still so Jared could finish.

"How can you stand to be with me? I'm broken, Jensen. I'm no use to anybody."

But he couldn't hold back against that; he reached out, and Jared leaned into his arms. He held him while he sobbed, and Jared's arms came around to hold him tight. And then he let go. He sat back, and wiped the tears away with the heels of both hands.

"I am so tired of crying. I'm tired of being weak, of being useless. I don't even remember who I used to be anymore. I can't be him again, anyway. But I hate being useless and broken and weak, the way I've become. I don't want to be that person any more."

 

* * *

Dr. Tilley signed off on five weeks with no appointments, and Jared said he wanted to go. Jensen contacted Malik, and Morgan okayed it, and even expedited Jared's passport, and Jensen took Jared to Ireland. Jared was finally reunited with his younger son, and saw his grandson for the first time since he was just a few days old. Seamus was shy, but with everybody reinforcing the resemblance between the tall man standing next to his Grandad, and the photographs Seamus had always known of his Grampa, Shay eventually mellowed and leaned in to hug and kiss Jared.

Jared knew Robby would be there, but he was surprised to see how much he'd matured. He was glad that he and JJ seemed to be establishing a good relationship – they both seemed happy, and so did Seamus. He could wish them nothing better, as long as they were happy.

Jared did his best to settle in, but he was restless. He ran in the mornings, said hello to the villagers who greeted him, but he didn't stop for conversation. He left the shopping to Jensen, mostly, so he didn't have to reconnect or make smalltalk with people he used to know. Cousin Mairead had them all to dinner. Seamus was being charming and everyone was laughing and talking. Jared was just trying to keep a smile on his face, when Mairead's old spaniel propped his chin on Jared's knee, and looked up at him adoringly. Probably just trolling for a handout, Jared smiled. But his hand dropped to stroke the silky ears, and he relaxed a little; his breathing got easier, his smile less forced. He got through the evening.

The rented house in the states was a blank slate; it held no history for either of them, for any of their family. Here in Ireland he had shared a life with Jensen and the kids, and things kept surfacing that made him wonder what life had been like for them, with him gone. He felt oddly guilty for not giving it serious thought before now. Even when he had watched the vids and looked through the photos Jensen had made for him, the new house put a distance between him and their reality. Here, where he and they shared history, it was clearer how difficult it had been for them, having to live without knowing what had happened to him. He wasn't certain what to do with the emotions such thoughts stirred up. He thought he was doing pretty well overall, but he kept reacting in ways he wasn't sure were appropriate, and he was a little worried about it.

He decided to write things down, make some notes, a list, so he and Dr. Tilley could discuss them when he got home. He couldn't find any paper to write on in the kitchen, so he checked in the study. He tried the center drawer of the desk he'd shared with Jensen, where they always kept notepads and pens, and he found pens, all right. But there was also a jumble of objects – small toys, finger puppets, Pez dispensers, colored paperclips, and thumbtacks with funny superhero heads, pencil-top erasers shaped like the Eiffel tower or a bottle of soda. They caught his interest, and he sat down in the desk chair to poke through them. All of this had accumulated while he'd been gone; he wondered what clues they offered to Jensen's life without him. He fingered the rubber erasers, and stared at the Spiderman thumbtack before dropping everything back into the tray. These things were just things, opaque, they offered none of the insight he hoped for.

He closed the center drawer and opened the right-hand top one. There was a jumble of boxes of pens and – his old set of drawing pencils. He reached in for it, and underneath was a brown notebook. Jared pulled it out, too, and laid the pencil set aside. It had a dark brown cover meant to look like leather. It was plain, with no words or embellishment on the cover. The paper was heavier than a standard school notebook, but it was ruled with the same blue lines. He flipped past the first blank page, and read the date at the top of the next page: he'd been missing more than a year when this was written. His eyes dropped to the first words below the date: _Hey Jared,_ and he started to read.

_I couldn't get to sleep. I'd audio record this, but I can't really stand the sound of my own voice right now – it's the middle of the night, and I'm missing you. So much it hurts. I don't know where you are, but I wish you were here – or I was there with you, wherever they've got you._

_Sometimes it's so hard believing I'm ever going to see you again, hold you in my arms, kiss you and touch you all over, make love to you like you're the best thing in my world – because you are, you know. Even when we're apart, you still own my heart and my soul – and because you have them, sometimes I feel like I'm just empty, getting through the days on automatic. I feel numb, like there's no light anywhere, no hope._

_But then I realize how stupid that is – that I have to have hope, that wherever you are, you'll come back to me. And you have to know I'm here, waiting for you, believing in you, in us, and what we've had. That what we have is where we start what we're going to build together once you're home._

_The kids and the baby are the light that keeps me going, and I wish you could know how much we all miss you, how we love you, that we keep you in our hearts and hope every day is the day we hear you're coming home. The baby points at your picture and calls you Grampa, and kisses your face. We talk about you all the time, we tell him about you, how much you love him. He loves you, too. And when you come home, he's going to know you, who you are, and he's going to love on you so much. We all will... We can't wait._

_I can't wait. I want us to go away together, someplace warm and secluded where we never have to put on a stitch if we don't want to. Someplace I can lay you down on soft sand and lick you all over, kiss you and bite and suck and touch you, everywhere, and you can do all those things to me too, and more, until we're both caught up on touches, on kisses, on fucking and being fucked. Do you think that can happen, Jared? Do you think we'll ever catch up? Because I don't think we ever can. There's so much time we've missed. But you know what? It'll sure be fun trying, right?_

_I miss you, miss your voice, your laugh, your strength, your wisdom, your patience. Miss your stupid jokes and stupid gorgeous hair, your beautiful smile, your hands, your fantastic ass, your cock. I want you back, beside me, inside me, all around me, where you belong, and I swear to god, no matter what happens I won't ever, ever let you go again._

_I hope you're well. I hope things aren't –_

_I love you, Jared, sweetheart, love. I want you home. God, come home, soon, baby._

_Your Jensen_

 

* * *

 

 **Comments?** [  
](http://fufaraw.livejournal.com/25853.html)

 


	6. More Than Ever | J2 AU NC-17 |

They came home from Ireland almost a week early. Jared was restless and irritable with everyone, unable to relax and settle, and home seemed the best idea. But none of it had gotten any better since they'd come back. He'd blown off his appointment with Dr. Tilley, and was spending most of his time in the gym. He was brusque with Jensen, barely speaking, rejecting ideas to do things or spend time together. Jensen was pleased, though, that he'd arranged on his own to spend a day out with his dad, and even more encouraged when they came home with Jared flourishing a new driver's license. That development had become more worrying, though, when the rev of the engine was the only notice Jensen had that Jared was going out. No idea where he was going, or when he'd be back, just – gone. And try as hard as he might to deny it, Jensen's creeping panic at _not knowing_ surfaced every time it happened. He needed to catch Jared in a receptive mood, and explain to him why tearing off without saying anything was so upsetting.

He rented a car, since Jared kept taking their only wheels. And he started to plan a shopping trip for a new vehicle, hoping that Jared would enjoy car-shopping with him. Jared could even pick out what he wanted; that way they would both have something to drive. It hadn't come up before, because they'd spent all their time together. But with Jared's urge for independence, Jensen needed a way for them to stay in contact. Jensen went to the phone store and picked out something nice. He had kept Jared on their phone plan all this time. Dropping him – well, it seemed too much like admitting he was gone forever. Besides, in the very unlikely case Jared somehow managed to hang onto his phone, managed to make a call....

Jensen knew it was stupid, but he couldn't take Jared off the plan – not until there was no possibility at all. But his stubborn refusal paid off now, since all he had to do was add the new phone. It had even more bells and whistles than Jensen's did. He hoped Jared would like it.

The SUV was in the driveway. Jensen parked beside it, and with the packaged phone in hand, he went inside to find Jared. He didn't have to look very hard. He was out by the pool, a tumble of longnecks on the ground around the lounger, another one in his hand.

"Hey Jared," Jensen said, trying to keep his tone even. Anger or disapproval were not going to help right now.

Jared looked at him, raised his beer in salute. "There he is!" Jared crowed, his features twisted in a sneer. "Man of the hour! My hero!"

Jensen had no idea what was going through his head. He dropped the phone package on the end table before stepping out onto the patio. Now was evidently not the time for presents.

"Jared? You all right?"

Jared nodded emphatically, the sneer smoothing to smugness. "Jus' peachy," he said. "Jus' sittin' here, waitin' for my hubby to come home."

"Well," Jensen kept his tone neutral. "I'm here."

"Damn straight," Jared muttered, taking a long swig of his beer.

"I – uh. I should probably start dinner." Jensen figured getting out of Jared's line of sight might let him calm down a little. And food might help counteract some of that beer.

Jared's jaw nodded up and down, belligerent. "'a's right," he approved. "Little wifey get to the kitchen and make a good supper. Take good care of his hubby like it's his job, right?" His expression got more mulish with every passing second. "Poor broken, helpless hubby. Can't manage on his own. Need a – a nanny." He sputtered with bitter laughter at his own joke. "Heh. Nanny-Jensen."

Jensen took a step toward him. He didn't need to just stand here and take this, even if it was obvious it was coming from Jared's pain.

"Jared, that's not fair – "

He was unprepared for the explosion; Jared came up off the lounger, fury in every line of his face and body.

"Why don't you just get the fuck out and leave me alone, huh, Jensen?" Jared screamed. "Just leave me the fuck alone!" He threw the beer bottle against the wall where Jensen stood. His aim was good, it didn't connect; Jensen only felt the wind of its passage and the splash of its contents before it hit and shattered. He didn't answer, he didn't even look at Jared. He spun on his heel, walked down the hall to the front door, picked up his keys, got in the car, and left.

The car was leased. Jared had taken over the SUV, and Jensen hadn't gotten around to shopping for a new vehicle for himself; the lease was a temporary compromise. For a while he just drove, somewhat more aggressively than he finally realized he should, and he attempted to calm himself before he did something foolish or careless in traffic. Jensen headed out past the suburbs onto a mountain road, and climbed for a while, letting his body synch with the car to take the curves as neatly and economically as possible, nudging the accelerator out of every one. He flicked an eye at the gas gauge – a little late, since all the stations were behind him – as he headed up into rough country. But the tank was three-quarters full; running out shouldn't be a problem.

He deliberately didn't think about Jared's parting words, or the struggle that had been escalating between the two of them lately. But when those thoughts began to surface, he shook himself mentally, trying to postpone dealing with them. But the time had come, it seemed, and facing the truth couldn't be put off any longer.

Jensen slowed and began looking for a place to pull off the road. Jared had been improving, by huge strides. His progress seemed so positive; if he kept up the pace he'd hit lately, things could be back to normal within months, maybe even weeks. Jensen sighted a crescent-shaped pull-off, paved so tourists could stop to read a map, or take a nap, or park and walk out muscles set from riding too long. There was an overlook directly across the road, and Jensen got out, locked the car and pocketed the keys before he walked across to stand at the stone wall and stare out at the vista below and beyond him.

He had tried to be everything that Jared needed, to anticipate how much, how often he would tolerate being touched, having someone else in the room, having someone listen, or talk to him – whether he was capable at the moment to answer, or engage in a conversation. Sometimes, he had told Jensen and Dr. Tilley in a joint session, it was helpful just to have someone nearby, to hear their voice, and not be expected to really listen, or answer back.

Jensen had understood when Jared cowered under the bedclothes and couldn't come out and face the daylight. He'd sat by the bedside, not touching him until Jared worked through whatever memory was dogging him that day, until Jared moved, spoke, was able to get up, or asked for food, or for Jensen to come to bed and hold him.

He had backed off and let Jared rant and throw things, scream and cry and curse – but when he started attacking himself, his own body, Jensen had stepped in to do what he could to calm and reassure and talk Jared down to a more reasonable place.

Jensen was willing to do anything – anything – to help get Jared back. It was still so wonderful to have him right here, in arm's reach, his scent, his voice, even sometimes fleetingly, his smile, or even more rarely, his laugh. After years of wondering whether he would never see Jared again, after beginning to fear he had been killed, was dead and Jensen's heart with him, the relief at having him back was incalculable.

Jensen had kept his belief that Jared would be found, he had kept his family's spirits up and never let them stop believing. Even when it seemed futile, and he was tempted to relent and mourn, and finally be able to let Jared go.

He hadn't. He'd believed Jared was alive, that he would be found, and be returned to him. And somehow, in spite of everything, it had happened. Jared survived, and had been brought home to Jensen. And at last, Jensen could let go a little, and let someone else be strong a little while, could relax and be taken care of, after his long, lonely vigil.

But that wasn't what happened. It wasn't his Jared who returned. It was some skittish, damaged, scarred and scared broken man who needed care and support, who had horrible flashbacks waking and sleeping, who wasn't sure who he was, or that he wasn't going to be tortured again, who half the time didn't recognize Jensen, and the other half didn't seem able to care.

And Jensen had firmed his jaw and lifted his head and dealt with this damaged Jared. His love for Jared had never faltered, and he was still so immensely grateful to have gotten him back at all.

But he was tired. And now that Jared was physically stronger, nearly completely recovered, as well as he would ever be, things were actually worse than they had been when Jared first came home, and had depended on Jensen for everything.

He fought every decision. He argued and threw things and was horrible to be around, he was rude and insulting to everyone, but most of all to Jensen. In fact, he seemed dedicated to driving his husband away from him.

Jensen was on the point of relenting, and doing as Jared demanded. He didn't have the strength, anymore, to stand up to him, day after day. To see that he took care of himself physically, to head off difficulties and frustrations, whether with something physical, like the TV remote, or emotional, like his relationship with his parents, or their children. Jared fought him, was rude and scathing and belittling. He took every opportunity to insult and anger Jensen.

Of course, sometimes he would be so apologetic, tears in his eyes, sobbing that he was sorry, sorry, please forgive. How could Jensen not forgive, knowing what Jared had endured, isolated and alone? Then it would be good, for a while, until it all fell apart again.

And where had that led him? To this place, alone on the side of the road, tears leaking from eyes that ached from his refusal to shed them until now. At this moment he never wanted to see, or have to interact with, another human being again. Jensen's emotions were battered, his compassion and empathy sore and bruised, and there was nothing for him to do with those feelings. Nobody there to be strong for him. His rock, his husband, had been taken away from him years ago, and some rough, needy, abrasive stranger had been returned in his place.

The sobs tore out of him, and his knees buckled. He sat there leaning up against the rock wall warmed by the sun and wept and shook until he was dry and spent. A few cars passed, but though one slowed, none stopped, and he was grateful for that.

An hour, or two, or half a day later, he pulled himself to his feet, went back to the car and found a box of tissues, wiped his eyes and blew his nose, and then poured a handful of water from the bottle in the console and splashed his face. He turned to look out across the view, beginning to purple a bit now in the sunset shadows, and squared his shoulders, drew a deep breath, and then another.

He got back in the driver's seat, and pointed the car toward home.

* * *

Jared wanted badly to call Jensen back, to wrap his arms around him and tell him he was sorry. He didn't mean those awful things, please forgive him, don't be mad. He was a jerk, an ungrateful, mean and worthless jerk. He didn't deserve Jensen, or his family, or anything anybody did for him. Jared deserved to be back in the dark and the cold, shivering in fear, and knowing at least that he would be given what he deserved. It was coming, he could always hear the footsteps.

He stood and gathered the empties for the recycling bin. As he passed, he saw the phone package, and when the bottles were dealt with, Jared opened the package and felt terrible all over again because Jensen had bought him something new and useful. He sat down and read the instructions, turned the phone on. The "check voicemail" icon came up; it showed he had messages. Who would be leaving him messages, he wondered. He touched the icon, and the synthetic voice listed calls from Mac, and Jensen, and his dad, even a couple from Arthur Clark. They were all dated the night, and the days after Jared had been picked up. There were a couple of dozen of them, all frantic, he realized, trying to find him, and failing that, to reassure him they were searching for him, hoping he was still alive and still had his phone. He couldn't bring himself to listen to those urgent pleas. He hovered over "delete," but decided not to burn that bridge just yet. The last of them seemed to be four days after he'd gone missing, then they just stopped. But he scrolled down, and there was one more, dated months later, from Jensen. Almost without deciding to, he cued that one. He recognized that tone from the first words; when he made the call, Jensen had been very drunk.

 

"I am so mad at you. If you were standing in front of me right now, I don't know if I'd grab you and hug you and not let you go, or haul off and punch you. I want to scream, I TOLD YOU SO! at you. I want to pound on you with my fists and scream in your face. How could you do this? How could you keep pushing and pushing when you knew how I felt about your being involved? Keep risking yourself like you were somehow immune to consequences?" Jensen's voice stumbled over the syllables, and Jared could picture him, making extravagant gestures the way he never did, sober. "Like you could never be caught, like that would never happen?

"Newsflash, Jared, it happened. I don't know where you are and it makes me crazy not knowing. The things I imagine happening to you, and I'm not there to stop it, I can't make it stop. I'm so scared. I'm scared I'll never see you again, and – Just, no. I can't let myself think that too long, because the truth of it is just so awful.

"I need my husband here, I need you so much, I need you under my hands, in my arms, real and here and safe." Jensen was crying now. Jared could hear the tears in his voice. "I need you to hold me and make me believe everything's going to be all right. But you're _not here_! And that makes me furious with you, because you _promised_ me that you'd always be here, that we'd handle whatever came up, together. You let me down, fucker. You _left_ me, here alone, to handle everything on my own – the kids, our parents, everything. Including the fact that the most important person in my life is missing and I'm going crazy and you're not here to make that better. And also? I have to keep backing away from thinking about what I'm so afraid they're doing to you.

"I'm a mess.

"I need you, man. Jared I'm scared. I don't know how to do this alone. I love you, I miss you so bad, and I'm still mad as hell at you and I want you home, now. Come home, Jared, please. Please. Just come home." The voice trailed off, and it was a few seconds before the recording clicked off.

He didn't know when the tears had started. But he couldn't put it all down to the beer. Jensen's voice – so much pain. Jared lived, almost every breath with the pain of what had been done to him, what he'd endured at the hands of...others. He had hurt so much and for so long that he really hadn't given any thought to the ones who had lost him, with no news and no real hope. His family – They'd gone on, waiting for him, trying to believe in a future he was a part of, hoping and doing the best they could without him. This... This was too much. He couldn't fix himself, he couldn't make himself better. He could never make it up to them, what those years had done to them. Why was he here, at all? Why had he come back?

* * *

Jared heard rattle of keys as they hit the table. Jensen headed toward the kitchen, not looking at Jared when he asked, "Did you eat?"

"Not hungry."

Jensen stopped, then changed direction. "Yeah, me either. Think I'm just going to shower and go to bed." He passed the sofa where Jared sat, tense with the need to apologize.

"Jensen." Jared didn't quite dare reach out, even when Jensen stopped, waiting. "I'm sorry."

Jensen didn't turn around, didn't look at him. "I know," he said. "Goodnight."

* * *

 

Jared called Dr. Tilley himself, and asked to see her as soon as possible. He needed help, he knew he couldn't find a way out of the pit he was in by himself, and he couldn't keep depending on Jensen. He wasn't Jensen's job – or if he was, then Jensen was his job, too. And he was completely unable to help himself, let alone Jensen or anybody else. He had coasted long enough, dragging Jensen down, after all those years when Jensen had been alone, had managed the kids and – everything – without Jared. It was time Jared stood up and did what he could to recover, so he could take back some of that load.

He began to see Dr. Tilley once a week, sometimes twice, and rather than sitting passively through their sessions, he opened up, he talked, he asked questions, sought answers, asked for resources to read and study and learn. He wanted to get better. Dr. Tilley welcomed his new commitment, and wrote him a couple of new prescriptions to help maintain that level of investment. But she cautioned him, reminded him that progress meant uncovering the unexpected. And exposure often led to regression, before resolution and being able to move forward again.

* * *

Jensen had lunch with Jared's dad, and managed to buttonhole Mac into coming too.

"Jared needs people. I'm getting back to work, and I can't be there every minute with him," Jensen appealed to them for help. "Besides, we're getting on each other's nerves, and both of us need to be apart, spend some time with other people, get some air into this thing." He peered at each of them in turn over his water glass as he sipped, and hoped they might have some answers.

Gerry spoke first. "Honestly, I don't think he's been in contact with any of the people he knew and worked with, in years. I don't even know if any of them are still around."

"Would they even have anything in common, anymore?" Mac wondered. Gerry nodded and Jensen shrugged.

"There are a few folks I still see that knew him," Mac offered. "They all know what he's been through, and they'd be glad to see him." He sipped at his own drink before he went on. "But I don't know.... They're all still deeply involved in 'the work.'" His eyebrow quirked at the euphemism. "I'm not sure if he's ready to hang out with subversives again, even if they are old friends."

Jensen's face fell, and he picked at his salad morosely. "So we're just a pair of losers with no friends," he muttered.

"What's this about, Jensen?" Gerry wanted to know.

"I need some space. I really need to start bringing in some income again; we've coasted long enough. And both of us...." He glanced at both of them, and shrugged. "He needs some time away from me, too. But I don't think he's ready to spend it alone – he thinks too much when he's by himself."

"Well, I can grab him for lunch a couple times a week," Gerry offered.

Mac nodded. "And I'll make up some reasons why he needs to come help me with one thing or another. And we'll see about getting him together with old friends. And maybe, while we're out and doing stuff, he can make some new friends."

Jensen blinked at them, and his smile gradually deepened with relief. "Thanks. Thanks, guys."

 

Jared had been slowly going through all the vids Jensen made for him while he was gone, enjoying seeing the kids. Seamus at every stage made him smile. Since he and Jensen came home from Ireland, he'd kept in contact with JJ through Skype, and with Robby and Shay, too. Jared was happy that Seamus recognized and accepted him, and he was grateful to Jensen and the kids, who took the time to teach the little boy about his absent grampa.

But there were other vids, too. Some short, private ones to him from Jensen. The one he was watching now had photos, along with the video.

"Hey, Jared. I was thinking last night – you remember that trip we took to Mexico?"

Jared stood facing the camera, the white sand beach and the intensely blue water behind him. His blue and white trunks hung precariously low from his hipbones, and he flashed a brilliant grin at the camera, at Jensen behind it. His eyes were hidden behind big black shades, and his hair was messy and windblown, curled from the salt water, streaked lighter here and there by days in the sun. Sweat visibly tracked down him, highlighting places where Jensen had licked it off him as soon as they got back inside.

"Come on, man, one more!" Jensen insisted, while Jared stalked toward him, purpose in every step.

"Enough!" Jared growled. The video went to hell, unfocused and shaky, but Jensen's voice, "Jared – Jared, wait – " and his own growling response were clear.

Jared's recollection of that day was vivid. It included things not caught on video, things like texture, and pressure, and scent. His memory unspooled as the sound continued.

"No waiting." Jared's teeth tugged at an ear as Jensen struggled to keep his feet. But Jensen knew the best defense is a good offense, and he tipped his head to lick a wide stripe up Jared's throat. Jared's shudder of response and his and helpless groan enabled Jensen to take charge of steering them. Entangled, they stumbled over the threshold and, when Jared would have headed straight for the giant bed in the middle of the room, Jensen aimed them toward the shower.

"Wanna blow you," he whisper-rasped against Jared's jaw and ear, and it was only will that kept Jared's knees from failing as he let himself be pushed. Jensen managed to drop the camera safely on the bureau as they staggered past. He pushed Jared against the shower wall and got the taps on, enough cold in the mix that it wouldn't scald them, and dropped to his knees as the water cascaded over both of them. He undid the knot and let the blue trunks fall around Jared's ankles, hobbling him – Jensen was not above playing dirty, and was all for exploiting something now and then that handicapped Jared's strength and size in Jensen's favor.

Jared squirmed when Jensen licked at the crown of his dick, but Jensen strong-armed him, left hand on his belly pinning him against the wall while his right cupped and fondled Jared's balls. He opened up and swallowed Jared down, eyes blazing green as he held Jared's gaze, tonguing the vein underneath, hollowing his cheeks as he sucked, releasing Jared's cock to lick down to the base and up again, nibbling at his slit before opening up and taking him down to the root. Jensen's throat opened to take the head and when he swallowed around it the pressure was more than Jared could withstand. He came with a yell, and stood weak-kneed and swaying while salt water and salt-sweat and come all washed away.

 

"Do you remember that trip, Jared?" Jensen's voice asked, as the video clicked over to a long shot of Jensen surfing – pretty well, for a beginner. The camera, now in Jared's hands, tracked as his husband's gift of balance and apparent ability to cling like a cat to the unstable footing brought him in, grinning triumphantly, to hop off the board in the foaming shallows, grab it up and trot toward Jared with a brilliant smile.

Jared remembered.

* * *

He drank a couple extra glasses of wine with dinner, they seemed to have helped loosen him up. He thought about the "honeymoon" video, and some of the entries he'd read from the journal he'd found in Jensen's desk. He really looked at the man sitting across the table from him at dinner, and he remembered how much he wanted him, how much he had always wanted Jensen. And when dinner was finished and the dishwasher was running, Jared took another deep draught of wine and moved to stand pressed against his husband.

He took a deep breath, inhaling that scent that was home to him, that had always sent his senses reeling with want. He dropped his head to nuzzle Jensen's neck, pressing up against his back, arms going around to pin Jensen against the counter.

"...Jared..?" Jensen held still for a long moment, and Jared licked a long stripe from his ear to his collarbone. Jensen pushed back against him in reflex, and Jared could feel how his knees buckled, and then locked. Jared read Jensen's body perfectly, years of study and experimentation giving him information and access. And Jared used it: sucking little bruises into the skin of his neck, pulling his collar aside to get to more freckled skin. He slid a hand around Jensen's waist, his fingers recalling the mechanics of buckle and zipper, and then there was nothing between his hand and Jensen's dick but a single layer of cotton.

When Jensen would have turned to face him, seeking a kiss, Jared held him pinned between the counter and Jared's body, his back to Jared's front. From the needy noises Jensen was making, Jared's approach was working. Jensen reached back to grab Jared's ass and pull him in harder against him; his other hand cupped Jared's head, and he turned as far as he could to kiss Jared's mouth, suck and bite at Jared's lips.

"Ah! Jared, come on!" Jensen panted, rubbing his ass against Jared's thighs. Jared kept his body positioned just so, while one of his hands cupped Jensen's jaw, angling his head so Jared could suck on his neck. The other hand slipped beneath the elastic of Jensen's boxer briefs, and closed on the hardness of his cock.

"Jared!" Jensen panted. "Baby, come on, come on!" And Jared's hand began to pump Jensen's dick, remembering just the right pressure, just the right rhythm, and Jensen was already halfway there, Jared could tell. He let his attention slip for a moment, though, and Jensen finally brushed his ass against Jared's cock.

His limp and utterly un-engaged cock.

"S-stop," Jensen bucked away from Jared's hand. "Jared, stop." He pushed back far enough from the counter to spin to face Jared. He looked so delectable, all flushed and rumpled, his dick tented in his pants – for Jared, all for Jared.

"Jared?"

Jared took a step back, shook his head. He turned on his heel and left the room.

 

They didn't talk about it. They went to bed, each on their own side of the mattress, a wide bare gulf down the middle.

 

Jensen was awakened abruptly by a heel to his shin, Jared thrashing and trying to escape from his arms, from the folds of the sheet wrapped around him. He was gasping great searing lungfuls of air, as if he was drowning, and he was screaming.

"NO! No, please, please! Please don't! I've told you everything, I don't know, please please please, DON'T! God, no, don't, stop – " and then it was just a series of throat-tearing screams pulled out of him by whatever he'd been dreaming. Jensen tried to soothe him, get his arms around him, but Jared fought him like a madman, succeeding in getting off the bed, only to trip in the folds of the sheet and fall hard onto the floor. The fall seemed to have at least partly awakened him, but when Jensen scrambled down beside him, reached out to pull him into his arms, Jared flinched, pulled away, and _wailed_. Jensen raised his hands so Jared could see he wasn't trying to hold him, but Jared wasn't looking. He'd curled into a fetal position, a smaller, more tightly compact ball of human than Jensen would have believed possible of such a large man.

Still not touching, Jensen snapped on the bedside lamp to dispel the shadows and maybe some of the nightmare, and bent down to look into his face. "Jared?"

A high keening came from his husband, and the tightly compacted form began to rock. Jensen reached out again, laying a hand lightly on a shoulder to establish some contact, hoping the touch would help lead Jared back to reality. Jared's flesh shuddered and twitched under his hand, and the keening went up a note. Jensen persevered.

"Jared, it's me, it's Jensen. You're okay. You're home, you're safe. There's nobody here but us, and nobody's going to hurt you, I promise."

Jared continued to rock, but he didn't shake off the touch, and Jensen smoothed the hair back from his face, wiped away tears with gentle fingertips, and felt the gradual loosening of muscles as Jared continued to keen and rock.

"Come on, big guy," he cajoled, using an old nickname to try and establish contact and reality, helping and urging Jared to let go more, to sit up. "Let's see if we can get you back on the bed."

The rocking stopped, and Jared caught Jensen's hand in one of his. "Jensen?"

"Yeah, buddy, it's me."

"Why'm I on the floor?" His voice, rough from screaming, was quiet now, vaguely petulant and puzzled.

"You had yourself a nightmare," Jensen told him. "A real doozy, too, from the sound of it. Come on, back on the bed with you."

He unfolded and tried to stand, shakily, but accepted Jensen's help without flinching. Luckily it wasn't far to get him back into bed, and Jensen straightened and pulled up the covers. He brought a glass of water, and Jared drank it down.

Jensen crawled in and spooned up behind him, one arm across his waist pulling him close. "You okay?" he asked. Jared was far from all right, but maybe he was okay enough now to sleep through till morning.

Jared nodded and relaxed back against him, his arm over Jensen's, tucking it in tight against his belly. His breath evened out, and Jensen's did, too. Jensen was on the edge of sleep when Jared started to speak.

"They put me in a ten-foot square cell in the middle of a room. I had a bucket and a bunk with no mattress. There was nowhere I could not be seen, no place to hide from their eyes."

He went on to tell Jensen how one of the guards had become interested in him. How he had arranged to have Jared, and himself, transferred to another detention center. How after that, Jared had never been housed with other detainees, but kept in a deserted wing, alone except for daily visits from the guard, Roberts. And finally, he told Jensen how Roberts made Jared his personal project and property.

* * *

Jared had all but stopped seeing Dr. Tilley. But, after making sure of client confidentiality, Jensen talked at length, and in depth, with her. He shared some of the details Jared had told him, and asked for her advice. How should he react, what he could do to help Jared get to a place where he could ask for the help he needed? And how he could help himself accept what had happened to the person he loved, how to deal with the anger, the need to track this guard down and kill him with his hands. Jensen knew he was a mess. But he knew Jared was in even worse shape.

The only thing Jensen knew to do was to be there, to let Jared know he was there if and when he needed him. He went about daily life as normally as possible, and hoped things would get better. He was working on a new album with Jason, working out of Jason's home studio. So that got him out of the house for a while every day. He knew Gerry was still seeing Jared for lunch, but really, they didn't talk much. Jensen didn't know how long this appearance of peace could last.

* * *

"Jared, dammit, are you trying to park me out of the driveway? Your truck is practically sideways. I don't even know how you do that," Jensen complained, throwing his keys in the tray.

He should have kept his mouth shut. When he walked into the room he could feel the tension in the air; Jared was spoiling for a fight. His hand was wrapped around a cold longneck.

"Jared,"

And his head swung around to give Jensen that snake-eyed look Jensen so dreaded.

"Thass me," he smirked. But when he saw Jensen's expression of disapproval, the smirk turned venomous. "Aw, there it is. There's that look. 'Jared, you shouldn't,'" he mocked, eyes slitted and mouth a slash of spite. "'Jared, you mustn't.'"

Jensen steeled his backbone and said what he had to. "Your meds. You can't drink with your meds."

Jared took a long drink, shifted where he sat, and made a rude noise. "It's one beer, Jensen. I guess I can have a beer when I want one." The eyes narrowed again as he stared at his husband. "'S not like I'm _in prison_ or anything, right?" The predatory smirk was back as he watched Jensen struggle to stay calm and non-judgmental. "Free man! In my own home. Can have a beer when I want one."

Jensen stifled his sigh and repeated, rationally, "You know alcohol interacts badly with the meds you're on – "

"'n 'at's another thing," Jared pointed at him with the bottle. "Stupid meds aren't doin' a damned thing." His dimples appeared as a shit-eating grin split his face. "I flushed 'em. Gone, Jensen." He waved the beer bottle in a parody of a magician's pass and intoned, "They will trouble me no more!"

Jensen wanted to slump in defeat and let the wall behind him take his weight. He wanted to weep – no, he wanted to scream and rant and yell at this badly patched-together man he didn't recognize who had taken Jared's place. The thought he usually didn't allow to surface did so now, that when Jared was missing, he had at least still been the Jared whom Jensen could love. It shocked him into movement; he turned to leave, and the Jared in the room exploded. The beer bottle hit the wall, and Jared screamed, "It's one goddam beer, Jensen. You always get that pruney look on your face. I'm sick of it!" He rushed past Jensen, stalking away down the hall. Uncertain whether to follow or to let Jared blow off some steam first, Jensen hesitated, until he heard the motor of the SUV crank. Jared wouldn't –

Jared had. By the time Jensen got to the door and got it open, Jared had reversed up the driveway and was driving away down the street, quickly reaching speed in excess of the residential limit.

Jensen's first instinct was to jump in the car and go after him. But what would he do if he caught up? Jared was angry, and not ready to listen. In fact, seeing Jensen would probably just make him madder, make him lose control even more. He should call the cops. Jared's judgment was impaired; he was at risk of hurting someone, hurting himself, and the cops could stop him, subdue him. Keep him and everybody else safe.

But the thought of what Jared might do, surrounded by uniforms, manacled, forced to submit, even if only to arrest, and being confined in a cell..? He couldn't quite make himself do it. He dialed Dr. Tilley instead.

 

Jensen blanched. He could hear Jared when he entered the station, and it frightened him as much as it tore at his heart. Jared sounded like a trapped animal, terrified, full of rage, uncontrollable. Jensen stepped back from the desk; he wasn't ready to do this. Dr. Tilley arrived a few minutes later, and he saw her face when she recognized what she was hearing, saw the pained expression replaced by stoic determination and a professional smile. He stepped up beside her, and they approached the desk together.

Jared was by himself in a small cell at the end of the corridor. The other prisoners had mostly backed as far as they could get from him, even confined as safely as they were behind their own bars, with another set between them and the wild man. A few were pushed up against the bars, gawping at the unusual exhibit in the zoo.

Jared was cuffed and manacled to the bunk. The officers on duty had tranqued Jared to subdue him. He had been throwing himself against the bars; bruises were already forming, and his clothes showed evidence of tearing and being pulled askew. His voice had the hoarse edge of having been shouting at volume for a while. He was – howling, or moaning, now, sound without words, without decipherable words, at least. Just tones of fear and rage and loneliness and despair. Jensen didn't realize he was trembling until Dr. Tilley wrapped an arm around him and squeezed.

"I'm going to go in first, okay?" She demanded Jensen's attention. "I need to assess him before we make any decisions. You stay here."

No, he shook his head. He should be the one. He should call out, claim Jared's attention, let him know his husband was here, that he wasn't alone, he was loved, please stop making that sound, Jensen would do anything, if Jared would only know he was loved and wanted and not alone anymore, and didn't have to make that sound.

The doctor knew her patients. "Jensen. The time will come when he needs you. But he won't even hear you right now. Let me make my assessment. You wait here. I'll call if you can help."

He let her go, watched as she tried to get Jared to recognize her, to acknowledge her, but Jared was trapped behind the tranqs, wherever his mind had retreated to; there wasn't any reaching him, right now.

 

Jensen stood, dumbfounded, as Jared, sedated and fully restrained on a stretcher, was wheeled out of the station and into an ambulance. Dr. Tilley had signed the order and called for a team, and would follow the ambulance to the hospital to admit him. Jensen was welcome to follow them, she told him. But he might want to wait twenty-four hours, until they had Jared stable and would have begun to assess his condition and develop a treatment plan. Jensen nodded, and watched the doors close, separating him from Jared, and saw the ambulance pull away, silent, lights flashing. He spoke to someone about where the SUV had been left when they stopped Jared, and drove over to it, parked his car in a deck nearby and paid for a day, then drove the SUV home to his empty house.

* * *

 

 **Comments?** [  
](http://fufaraw.livejournal.com/25580.html)

 


	7. More Than Ever | J2 AU NC-17 | Epilogue

 

Jared was at Whitley Hospital for six weeks. Dr. Tilley admitted him for observation and treatment for twenty-eight days, the first week of which he was allowed no visitors.

Jensen met with her, anxious for news of Jared, on one hand wanting desperately to see him, and on the other, dreading it.

"He needs to adjust to the routine and the environment, Jensen," she said, kindly but implacably. "We need to clear his system of whatever he's been using to self-medicate, and see what we're dealing with. And then we need to adjust and tailor his meds to maintain his equilibrium. He'll be in therapy sessions, group and individual, and even if he avoids some of them, he'll attend some, too. It's a structured environment, and it should help him get his balance back."

That was what Jensen was most worried about. "It's an institution," he said. "He's spent a lot of time locked up, doing what other people tell him. I'm not convinced this is what's best for him."

She nodded. "I'm aware that both of you have doubts – and I certainly admit Jared's background gives reason for those doubts. But I'm positive that this experience will help him.

"He's obviously not managing his life well." As Jensen started to speak, she added, "And it's not your job to manage his life for him."

He nodded, reluctantly, and she continued. "It robs him of agency, he depends on you. And then he resents you, both for the limits you try to impose, and for his dependence on you. We've seen how badly that worked, for both of you. It's time to try something different."

When Jensen was finally allowed to visit Jared, it broke Jensen's heart to be hugged by a bright and animated version of his husband, doing his best to impress Jensen. "I'm all better now, see? Let's go home. Take me home, Jensen."

When Jensen told him he would have to stay awhile, Jared started to unravel, first promising to be good, and then lashing out at Jensen for "keeping him locked up." He went from angry to sobbing, wrapped around Jensen and begging, in seconds. "I don't want to be locked up, Jensen. Get me out, please. I'll be good, I promise."

Jensen was in tears himself, and at a loss as to what to do. An orderly close by stepped forward and took Jared out of Jensen's arms. "It's time for Mr. P's afternoon therapy session, and then a little nap. He'll feel better afterward." He smiled at Jensen, and then addressed Jared directly. "Are you ready, Mr. P?"

Jared nodded meekly, and let himself be led away. Jensen started to follow, but a hand on his arm stopped him. "Best let him go, for now," the nurse said. "Come back tomorrow. He'll be feeling better then."

Week by week, almost day by day, Jared got stronger. His sense of humor re-emerged, and if it was a little sharper-edged, a little less kind than it had been, well, Jensen couldn't fault him for that. Jared interacted with other patients, and with staff. He didn't twitch and cower when someone passed close by. He initiated conversations and made cheerful comments. He seemed – happy. He was ready to talk about his group therapy and what he was learning there, about other patients and about himself. He even spoke a little about his personal sessions with Dr. Tilley, and shortly before his twenty-eight day confinement was finished, he suggested to Jensen it might do him some good to stay longer.

Dr. Tilley was in favor of it. "It will help him build on the good start he's made. He's doing good work here. Another two weeks will be good for him."

Jensen agreed. He missed having Jared at home, but he wanted what was best. And Jared getting better was good for both of them. "I'm kicking him out after that, though," Dr. Tilley told him. "Any longer, and he'll become dependent on us, rather than taking what he's learned and moving on."

Jared asked if Jensen would agree to a joint session with Dr. Tilley. Jensen wasn't sure why he hesitated. He had private sessions with her too – it wasn't as if she didn't know a lot about him, and about his and Jared's relationship. He wasn't sure why he was uncomfortable. Maybe he was afraid of hearing Jared's side of things? But if it would help Jared, help them, then he would do it gladly.

 

* * *

 

Jared was at home, now, for a couple of months. He was calmer, much more himself than he had been since he had been recovered. He had started working at some drawings, with an eye to maybe designing architecture again. He was making some attempts at reconnecting with old friends, and he had even gone out with Jensen and the members of the band, and some of their friends. He seemed to be taking life as it came, now, and enjoying it, for the most part.

"Hey," Jared stood a few feet away from the dining table where Jensen was working on a new lyric. He was backlit by the westering sun through the windows, his silhouette outlined in light. "You busy? Got a minute?"

Jensen just looked at him for a few seconds. God, that was a handsome man standing there. That was his husband. He shoved the chair back, stood and stretched. "Yeah, sure. Want a soda?"

He started for the kitchen, but Jared put out a hand to stop him. "No, wait. There's something I want to talk to you about."

"Sure, okay," Jensen said. "Have a seat."

"There's things I've been remembering for a while," he said, settling into a chair. "I think I've got a handle on it now, I've been dealing with them pretty well." He cast a curious eye at Jensen, who nodded agreement.

"I want to tell Morgan about Roberts." He said it in something of a little rush, and then sat very still, waiting for the reaction.

Jensen just breathed for a beat or two, and then, slowly, he asked, "If you're sure?" Jared nodded.

"Then yeah, I think you should." His face darkened, his expression grim. "The bastard needs to pay."

"There might have been...others. Others like me." Jared's voice was shaky, but his jaw was determined. "I couldn't live if I thought he got away with what he did."

Jensen was in total agreement. "As long as you're going to be okay with this, then I say go for it. I'm with you."

 

It was Malik who met them at the airport. He took one look at Jared and swept him up in a back-pounding hug.

"Dude, you look a hundred times better than the last time I saw you." He slanted a glance at Jensen. "You've been taking real good care of our boy."

Jensen smiled and shrugged. "He's worked really hard." He shook the hand Malik offered. "I don't think I ever said thanks," he began, but Malik cut him short.

"No need, man. All part of the job."

Beaver was waiting when they arrived at the office, and Morgan joined them as soon as they were settled around the conference table. "Now, I understand you have some new information for us?" Morgan asked.

Jared shrugged. "Not new. But I finally got to the place where I can tell people about it." He exchanged a small smile with Jensen, and launched into the harrowing account of the things Roberts had done to him in the name of "love."

There was a lot of quiet in that room while Jared spoke. Jim made notes from time to time, and Malik made a couple of his own. When he finished speaking, there were a few silent moments, before Morgan cleared his throat.

"Thank you, Jared, well done. We've already had corroborating testimony from at least two witnesses who were detained with you at different facilities." Morgan didn't offer names; it was doubtful they would mean anything to Jared anyway. "I understand how difficult it is going over all this again, but I can't tell you how important this information is."

Jared looked up, and Morgan nodded. Jared appeared to relax a little, knowing he wasn't the sole accuser. Morgan continued. "There's already a federal warrant for his arrest, and an ongoing manhunt for Theodore "Teddy" Roberts. We'll get him. And this," he tapped the recorder with a forefinger. "Will put him away."

The meeting was over. They shook hands all around, and Morgan promised to keep them informed about the case against Roberts.

The nightmares didn't stop. Of course they really hadn't expected Jared's confession to magically put an end to them. It was Jensen he wanted, Jensen he reached for when he woke screaming in panic. But during the day, most of the time he was better, he was fine on his own.

They shared a bed, and there was occasional cuddling. But Jensen refused to make the first move toward sex, and Jared was, so far, incapable of initiating it himself. Jensen spent extra time in the shower, often ruefully remembering the epically long showers their sons were fond of during their teenage years.

 

Morgan called to let them know Roberts had been arrested, was being held without bail. Jared put him on speaker so Jensen could hear, too. There was a grim sort of triumph in the look they exchanged.

"Jared, it's a federal case in a closed courtroom, just so you know. We probably have more than enough to convict without your testimony, so I don't want to pressure you. If you don't want to confront him in court, we can take your deposition to be read into the record.

"It's up to you. You just have to let us know what you want to do, so we can put this bastard away for good."

Jared looked to Jensen for guidance, but Jensen knew it wasn't his decision to make. "Mr. Morgan, can Jared call you tomorrow with his decision on that?" he asked. "He needs a little time to think about it."

"Of course," Morgan answered, as Jared nodded his thanks. "I'll look forward to hearing from you."

Jared talked it over with Jensen and decided, ultimately, that it had nothing to do with bravery or overcoming anything if he decided not to be in court when Roberts was tried. Jensen supported him completely, and was there when he called to give his decision. Morgan was fine with it. He would call back in a week or two to set up a place and time for Jared to give his deposition.

 

They still saw Dr. Tilley, individually and as a couple. It was a joint session today, and she had a surprise for them. "I've booked you both for a week," Dr. Tilley said, looking from one to the other. Jared squirmed in the chair beside his, and Jensen spoke.

"I don't really think – "

"No, Jensen, it's okay," Jared addressed him directly before turning to the psychiatrist. "I really want to work on this."

She gave him a nod of approval, and looked to Jensen. "Jensen, don't you want to work on recovering some of the closeness in your relationship?"

He stared at her in disbelief; why had he been coming here for weeks, if not for just this reason? He straightened in his chair and nodded without looking at Jared. "Of course."

"Then this retreat will give you both a chance to focus on each other, and the relationship you share, without distractions." She smiled encouragingly. "I think it will do you both a world of good. It's the next step, and it's a good thing you're both ready to take it."

And what steps are there after that, if this one doesn't work, Jensen wondered, though he kept that to himself. Because nothing so far seemed to be working for them. At least, not in this area.

 

Jared had always been tactile – in fact, it was Jared who had overcome Jensen's inhibitions when it came to physical demonstrations of affection. Jared always seemed to be touching the people he loved: two-armed hugs, getting pulled into that warm wall of chest, or simply an arm about a waist or shoulders, his hand on them somewhere, back or arm or face. He didn't have a sense of personal space, but somehow having Jared in your space was so easy and natural it was completely nonthreatening, even for someone like Jensen, whose family had not been as physically demonstrative.

The loss of Jared's impulse to touch with affection, to stroke one's hair or face, to hug, had been an aching gap, ever since Jensen had gotten him back. Jensen had attempted to bridge it with physical touch of his own, only to feel Jared withdraw from an offered touch, to stiffen and still within a hug. In the aftermath of nightmares, Jared sought Jensen's reassuring embrace, his touch. But once anchored again in reality, he shrugged it off, as if it felt oppressive and hard to endure. Jensen could feel the tension in him rise the more prolonged the touch. So he backed off, gave it time, waited it out.

But things with Jared hadn't changed, didn't seem to be changing. As Jared got stronger, found himself again and learned to stand on his own, he needed Jensen, and Jensen's reassuring touch, less. The lack of physical affection was just a part of the distance between them now, but Jensen had run out of ideas of how to break that barrier between them, how to close that distance, how to touch Jared and have his touch welcomed.

It was harder every day for Jensen not to be touched. He missed being wrapped up, surrounded by Jared. There were times when he had felt near suffocated by his husband's demonstrativeness, but now he craved it, now when it seemed like he would never feel it again.

So if there was any way to get even a fraction of that kind of closeness back, yes, he would go with Jared on this "couples' retreat."

 

* * *

They were packing for their trip when Jared's phone rang.

"Morgan," he told Jensen, and put it on speaker.

"We're here, Mr. Morgan."

"Guys, I've got some news." The agent sounded tired. "I guess it's up to you whether it's good news or bad news."

"What is it, sir?" Jensen was unsettled by the lack of animation in Morgan's voice.

"I'm just gonna come out and tell you, Roberts is dead."

"Dead?" Jared was unbelieving.

"Yeah. We read him the list of charges. He asked if you would be at his trial, and he acted upset when we told him you wouldn't be there."

Jared's face twisted, but he didn't speak. Jensen stood close, put a hand on his shoulder, while Morgan went on.

"We didn't have him on suicide watch, I see now we should have. He hung himself in the shower – he knotted the leg of his jumpsuit around his neck and tied the rest of it to the showerhead, and just – "

Morgan seemed to have finished, and clearly Jared didn't know what to say. Jensen spoke into the silence. "Mr. Morgan, thank you for telling us. Is there anything you need from us? From Jared? Would you still like him to give his deposition, for the record?"

"Yes, that's a definite. But we'll arrange that in a week or two. I just thought you both would like to know."

"Yes, sir," Jensen answered. "Thank you." The line went dead.

Jared stared, wide-eyed, at nothing, and it was freaking Jensen out. "Jared!"

Jared focused on him, and shrugged. "It's kind of – anticlimactic, right? I don't know, Jensen. Should I feel cheated?"

"What do you think, Jared? Do you feel cheated that he wasn't punished for what he did?"

Jared thought for a few minutes, and then gave a faint little smile. "I think dead is dead," he said, finally. And actually, Jensen was okay with that.

 

 

* * *

The facility was set in rolling hills carpeted with grass that many golf courses would envy. There was the main building, some industrial mogul's former estate, now converted to the Psychology Center. Other buildings were scattered around the property, but they were for the most part discreet and unobtrusive. The several-acre campus was graced with massive live oaks of a respectable age, and walking paths followed the rise and fall of the gentle hills, complete with a couple of small stone bridges arching over a stream that wound through the grounds.

Their suite was in the main building, and though the corridor boasted original 1920s millwork baseboards, door casings, and paneled doors, their rooms were simply but comfortably furnished, a bedroom and a small sitting room with comfortable-looking chairs, a bookcase, a flatscreen TV on the wall, and a games or small dining table and chairs near the window. Floor-length curtains looped back with simple bands, and the windows themselves were open to the sunny spring morning, the rustle of leaves, the conversation of passersby, and the distant hum of traffic lending signs of life to the empty room.

 

There were classes and seminars, and exercises in communication: by eye contact, by voice, by gesture and body language, and finally by touch. Jensen felt a little foolish, and he was sure Jared probably did, too. But this was supposed to help, so they followed the plan, and spent nearly every hour in each other's company, with a group of strangers.

 

There was an old three-seater metal glider set in the shade of one of the live oaks on the grassy lawn, and Jensen found himself there one sunny afternoon, rocking gently. He felt a little guilty for seeking solitude, a peaceful moment to himself, rather than staying where Jared was and working on recovering their relationship, what Jared had lost – what Jensen himself had lost, and was beginning to despair of ever getting back. What they had both lost.

He stared from the green depth of shadow out into bright sunshine, distance and inattention blurring the movement and sound that went on outside this pocket of peace. The glider lurched, and resettled into its rhythm as Jared sat down on the other end. He didn't look at Jensen, he didn't speak, but suddenly he lay down, folding himself small to fit, with his knees poking out at a ridiculous angle off the seat, and lowered his head to rest on Jensen's thigh. Jensen's hand had lifted out of the way in reflex, and it hovered in the air as Jared settled, and Jensen could feel and hear him release a little sigh. His hand lowered tentatively to touch Jared's hair where it stirred in the breeze, and Jared settled further, reaching over Jensen's lap in a one-armed hug.

Tears prickled as Jensen tried to understand, to accept this gift of contact, this voluntary touch and willingness to be touched, as he stroked Jared's hair, working through it to rub gently at Jared's scalp.

Jared hummed in pleasure and seemed to relax and settle against him even more, as Jensen's foot kept the glider moving at the same soothing pace. Jensen didn't dare speak, didn't want to interrupt or disturb this peace between them, this gift of closeness, of touch offered, accepted, and returned. He was very near to being overcome with emotion, but for the sake of the physical contact they had not shared for the weeks, months, since Jared had been recovered, Jensen blinked back the tears and kept the words, the questions, behind closed lips. He sat still, felt the warmth and the welcome weight of his husband willingly lying against him, and reveled in the privilege of touching him back as his fingertips stroked soothing circles into Jared's scalp.

"How much did you hate me, at first?" Jared asked, and it took a moment to register that he had spoken at all. Jensen caught the words a second later, but wasn't sure what he was being asked.

"What?"

"When you had your freedom taken away," Jared continued. "When you became dependent on me for whether or not you got to eat, what clothes – if any – you got to wear, what kind of conditions you lived in, whether or not you were beaten." Jensen felt Jared's breathing hitch as he forced out the next words. "When I raped you."

Jensen's hand fell to Jared's shoulder and he leaned forward, trying to meet his gaze. But Jared turned his face into Jensen's leg, unwilling to be seen, or to look at him – either, or possibly both. Jensen sat back and let that go. But he risked cupping Jared's shoulder gently. "Jared – "

"I thought about you a lot," Jared went on, determined to make this confession. And Jensen let him. It was time Jared got some of this out, and if he could help, then this was good.

"How horrible it had been for you. I mean, I _knew_ that, intellectually. I had accepted responsibility that it had been done to you, and to the others, and that I had benefitted from the practice. That was one of the reasons I wound up working for the movement. I felt guilty, and I wanted to atone."

Jared held himself very still; Jensen could feel his muscles stiffen before he forced out the next words. "But when I had those things taken away, when I had no defense, no recourse, no way to fight it, when it just _happened_ , no matter why, or what I wanted, I finally really realized what I had done to you."

His breath hitched where he lay pressed against Jensen, and it might have been a little sob. "And I just wondered," he went on, and Jensen could feel the dampness of tears soaking into his jeans. "How much you hated me, and how you ever got over it. Did you get over it?"

Jared sat up, and met Jensen's gaze, his own eyes blazing with a welter of emotions. "How can you love me when I did that to you? Do you love me? Did you ever?"

Every bit of control was dissolving, every barrier he had tried to keep his emotions contained behind was falling, and Jensen folded him tight in his arms and rocked him like a child.

Between all the emotion and Jensen's rocking and the unsteady motion of the glider, things got a little swimmy there for a moment, but Jensen planted both feet firmly and stilled the glider, pulled Jared tighter and just hung onto him while the terror, rage, and sorrow of the past four years found an outlet at last. Jared wept himself into exhaustion, clinging to Jensen, who just held him through it, strong enough to withstand it all, until both of them were silent and spent, swaying from reaction, in each other's arms.

 

"Jared, I lost you once, but I got you back." He pushed Jared upright so he could look him in the face, shook him a little. "Look at me." When he did, Jensen continued. "You've come this far, man, and it's such a very long way from where you've been. And we'll work on getting you back the rest of the way." Jensen put every ounce of love and belief in his eyes and voice. "I promise you. I'm not going to lose you again."

It took Jared a few moments to gather his courage, but he raised his chin and met Jensen's eyes, and nodded, almost in spite of himself.

"Okay," he said. "Okay."

 

**fin**

 

 

**Author's Note:**  
Once again, [](http://wendy.livejournal.com/profile)[ **wendy**](http://wendy.livejournal.com/)  and [](http://thehighwaywoman.livejournal.com/profile)[ **thehighwaywoman**](http://thehighwaywoman.livejournal.com/)  deserve medals for the organizing and catherding they do to make this challenge fun, as well as successful. You verily and truly rock, ladies.  
  
This fic would be a poor pitiful thing without the world's best beta, [](http://spn-j2fan.livejournal.com/profile)[ **spn_j2fan**](http://spn-j2fan.livejournal.com/). She knows this saga as well as I do, sometimes better, and when I'm out in the weeds looking at shiny things, it's she who gets me back on track, and headed in the right direction. Up with sloppy storytelling she will not put, and she keeps me on my toes. One of my (many) failings is a tendency to list things, instead of write about them. It's entirely thanks to her there are few lists herein. She's not just my beta, she's my wonderful friend. I'm so grateful to have her help, and you should be grateful, too.  
  
I have a small but dedicated support group, chief among them my head cheerleader and reaction-reader, [](http://meus-venator.livejournal.com/profile)[ **meus_venator**](http://meus-venator.livejournal.com/). I love it when the top of her head blows off. It's fun to make that happen. She is also a tech diva, and I'm eternally grateful for her kind escort of me and this story through the mysterious, confusing paths to posting. You should thank her, too. Otherwise we'd all be looking at gibberish code.  
  
[](http://angstpuppy.livejournal.com/profile)[ **angstpuppy**](http://angstpuppy.livejournal.com/) received a very sketchy and primitive first draft, plus a few "milestone" scenes to be included in the final version. In mere days, I opened an email from her, and promptly burst into tears. She had put together a playlist, with the sound file, which just blew me away. But it was the first glimpse of the cover that utterly wrecked me. She absolutely got where the story was going, and if that had been all, I would have been thrilled. But there was *more*. Please go to her art post and tell her how wonderfully evocative and haunting her artwork is.  
  
 **More Than Ever**  isn't an easy story to read. It certainly wasn't an easy one to write. But I do thank you for coming along on the journey.

 **Comments?**  [Master Post](http://fufaraw.livejournal.com/26875.html) on LJ  | [Art Post](http://angstpuppy.livejournal.com/207447.html) on LJ - show [](http://angstpuppy.livejournal.com/profile)[ **angstpuppy**](http://angstpuppy.livejournal.com/)  some love for all her hard work!

 


End file.
